Short-Let Planning in Edinburgh: What the Data Shows

I've recently published a new part of City Scope focused on short-term let planning applications in Edinburgh.

Since 2022, short-term let operators in Scotland have needed to register with their local authority and obtain the correct permissions to operate. In Edinburgh, that has meant many landlords also needing planning permission for full-time short-term let use.

A lot of operators appear to have assumed that if a property had already been used historically as a short-term let, planning permission would not be required. In many cases, that has not proved to be true. As a result, a large number of retrospective planning applications have had to be submitted by landlords wanting to continue operating.

Using the City Scope planning data pipeline, I'm now pulling in short-term let applications directly from the planning portal alongside the rest of the city's planning activity. The system currently retrieves new applications three times a day, and the short-term let dataset currently runs from January 2025 to today.

What you can do with it

This means you can now use City Scope to:

• Search for short-term let planning applications on your street
• Explore application hotspots on the planning map
• Filter short-term let applications across Edinburgh
• Review application outcomes in one place

Early findings

Some initial findings from the January 2025 onward dataset are striking:

This is still an early-stage dataset rather than a full historical picture, but it already gives a much clearer view of how short-term let policy is being applied in practice across the city.

What comes next

Over time, I plan to extend the dataset further and add deeper application-level insights as I continue improving the parsing pipeline and reducing processing costs. The aim is simple: make local planning data easier to search, understand, and use.