Nottingham Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Nottingham and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and there's nothing to apply for. Nottingham City Council, the unitary authority covering the city inside Nottinghamshire, operates no short-term let licence, no registration scheme and no cap on nights. That 90-night limit half the internet quotes at you is a Greater London rule, and it stops nowhere near the East Midlands.

The catch here isn't permission, it's cost, and it moved hard in 2025. Nottingham switched on a 100% council tax premium on second homes on 1 April 2025, so at the 2026/27 Band D charge of £2,755.39 an investment flat carries £5,510.78 before a guest arrives. The furnished holiday lettings tax regime vanished the same month, which makes any Nottingham guide written in 2024 wrong about the money. And a £2-per-room hotel levy the trade rejected in 2025 is back for 2027.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: where Nottingham's planning line sits in 2026, what crossing it costs, which of the council's three licensing schemes reach you and which don't, the tax layers nobody collects on your behalf, and who to ring when something goes sideways. Everything below comes from Nottingham City Council's own pages, UK legislation or government guidance, checked in July 2026. Before you commit to any of it, run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Nottingham, UK?

Go looking for that rulebook and the first surprise is how little comes back. There's no Nottingham short-let ordinance, no permit, no night threshold, and no council policy document with "short-term let" in its title.

I went further than a site search on this one, because a council can bury a policy inside a plan.

Nottingham's adopted development plan rests on two documents: the Aligned Core Strategy, adopted 8 September 2014, and the Land and Planning Policies Document, adopted 13 January 2020. That second one runs to a shade over 109,000 words. Searching the whole of it for "short-term let", "holiday let", "serviced apartment", "visitor accommodation" and "Airbnb" returns two hits, and both of them are about short stay car parking.

So the adopted plan says nothing.

What governs a Nottingham Airbnb instead is a stack of rules written for other purposes, and four layers do nearly all of the work.

Planning law sits at the top. England has no short-term let use class, so the only question a council can ask is whether the way you use the building has materially changed, and Nottingham judges that one case by case. There's no published threshold.

Housing law comes next, and Nottingham does more of it than most English cities. The council licenses private landlords under three separate schemes, though a genuine holiday let is carved out of all of them.

Tax comes third, and none of it is local. Income tax, VAT, and the test deciding whether you pay council tax or business rates are all set nationally. No platform remits any of it for you.

Private contracts come fourth, and they end more Nottingham plans than the council ever has. A lease covenant, a mortgage condition or an insurance exclusion needs nobody's permission to stop you dead.

Two national things people expect to find here are worth clearing up before you go hunting for them.

England's registration scheme still isn't in force. Section 228 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 has been law since 26 December 2023, and it says the Secretary of State "must by regulations make provision requiring or permitting the registration of specified short-term rental properties in England". No regulations have been made under it. Government's guidance on letting out a self-catering holiday home in England, updated 15 May 2026, still says only that the register "is expected to begin in 2026".

The 90-night cap doesn't reach Nottingham either. It flows from section 44 of the Deregulation Act 2015, which bites inside Greater London and nowhere else. That boundary is why Airbnb "automatically limit[s] entire home listings in Greater London to 90 nights a year" while a Hockley loft or a Sherwood semi runs uncapped.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Nottingham

Since the council isn't the gate, something else has to be. In Nottingham it's planning judgment, your lease, and your own arithmetic, roughly in that order of how completely each one can end the plan.

Take planning first, because that's where the grey area lives. Nottingham's own guidance puts it plainly: "Most new building work needs planning permission. Planning permission is also needed for some changes to how land and buildings are used."

Letting your own terrace for a fortnight while you're away sits at one end of that test. A purpose-bought Lace Market flat running a 250-night calendar, with weekly turnover, suitcases in the lobby and bins out on the wrong day, sits at the other, and it looks far more like a business than a home. Between them lies a wide middle that no Nottingham document maps.

Nobody will give you a free answer on where you fall. You can buy one, though.

The council points anyone who wants certainty at a Lawful Development Certificate, which it notes will show up on Local Land Charges searches later. That makes it a document a lender or a buyer can see, which a forum opinion never is.

The fee follows the national schedule rather than a Nottingham one. The housing ministry's planning fees from 1 April 2026 put "the making of a material change in use of a building or land" at £610. A certificate for a proposed use costs half the full application fee, so £305, while one confirming an existing use is £309.

Spending £305 to find out beats spending £610 to fix it afterwards.

Nottingham also sells advice before you apply, which is the cheaper route to a steer. Its pre-application charging structure prices a written response at £120 for householder development and £500 for a change of use of one to four dwellings, with extra officer time at £160 an hour.

Enquiries go to [email protected] on the council's pre-application enquiry form, and it quotes four weeks for the smaller categories and five for the larger ones. Do check how you're paying, since cheques are no longer accepted and it's card over the phone or bank transfer only.

While you're in the planning pages, clear up what Nottingham's Article 4 direction isn't. It requires permission for a change of use from C3 family housing to C4 or Sui Generis HMO where 3 to 6 unrelated people share, and separate directions cover Devonshire Promenade, Foxhall Road, Sneinton, Strelley Village, Waterloo Promenade and Wellington Terrace.

That direction was made for houses in multiple occupation, in a city where student housing has driven planning policy for two decades. Holiday lets aren't mentioned anywhere in it, and a self-contained flat let to one party at a time isn't an HMO. So it doesn't reach you.

Then comes the layer the council has nothing to do with, and it's the one that quietly kills the most plans:

• Your lease. City-centre apartment blocks are where this bites hardest, because a freeholder enforcing a covenant against short lets needs neither the council's help nor a planning officer's opinion.
• Your mortgage. A residential mortgage, and often a standard buy-to-let consent, won't cover nightly stays. Ask before you list, since asking afterwards is the expensive version of the same conversation.
• Your insurer. A normal home policy will decline a paying-guest claim, and claim time is a dreadful moment to find that out.

Settle all three before you buy a single sofa bed.

One leasehold clause can end the idea on its own, and no planning decision will ever rescue you from one.

Required Documents for Nottingham Short-Term Rentals

Get those consents back in writing and you'll want somewhere to file them, because they're the first entries in a pack nobody asks to see until something has gone wrong. An insurance claim, a fire officer's visit, an HMRC enquiry, or a neighbour's complaint that becomes an enforcement case: each one arrives asking for paper you either have or don't.

• A written fire risk assessment. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 covers paying-guest accommodation, and section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022, in force since 1 October 2023, requires the responsible person to "make a record of the assessment or review". That amendment also deleted the word "significant", so recording only the headline hazards no longer discharges the duty. Government's guide to making small paying-guest accommodation safe from fire, issued under article 50 of that Order and updated 20 January 2025, carries a checklist written for exactly this size of property.
• An annual gas safety record. The HSE names hotels and B&Bs among the duty holders alongside landlords, and its wording leaves no wriggle room: "You must ensure that a gas safety check is done every year on each gas appliance/flue."
• Electrical evidence. I couldn't confirm that the five-yearly inspection rules written for assured shorthold tenancies bite on a holiday let, since government guidance points holiday-let owners at general HSE material instead. Treat an in-date report as what your insurer expects rather than as a stated statutory duty.
• Dedicated holiday let insurance, carrying public liability cover, with buildings and contents written for short-term letting rather than for a family home.
• Written consent from whoever can stop you, meaning the freeholder or managing agent, the mortgage lender, and the lease itself.

The other half of that pack is numbers rather than certificates, and it exists because two separate authorities will eventually ask you to prove what this property is. Calling it a holiday home rather than a private rented home is a factual claim, and the burden of evidencing it sits with you.

• A booking record showing individual lets of 28 nights or less, which is the length test the business rates rules turn on.
• Nights available and nights let, counted across rolling 12 months. England's threshold is 140 nights available and 70 nights actually let, and it's the same evidence that answers a licensing officer and a valuation officer.
• Guest agreements or platform confirmations, showing licences to occupy for a holiday rather than tenancies.
• Council tax and business rates correspondence, including any premium notice and any rating list entry, filed together so the two authorities' views can be reconciled.
• Income and expense records for HMRC, kept to the same standard as any property business.
• Your Lawful Development Certificate, if you bought one.

Don't forget the guest-facing half of all this either. Exit routes, alarm positions, the gas and electric isolation points, and a number a real person answers all belong somewhere a guest will see them, and printing that costs nothing.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Nottingham

No Nottingham officer will ever ask to inspect that file under a short-term let licence, because the city doesn't issue one. There's no holiday-let permit, no registration, and no local consent of any kind for nightly letting.

What confuses people is that Nottingham licenses landlords harder than almost anywhere else in England. Three schemes went live together on 1 December 2023:

• Mandatory HMO licensing, for houses with five or more people in two or more households.
• Additional HMO licensing, for three or more people in two or more households, in designated areas.
• Selective licensing, for ordinary private rented homes.

Selective licensing is the big one. The council's second scheme covers "over 30,000 privately rented homes in a designated area", and the council is explicit that it "does not cover all areas of the city". The fees from 1 April 2026 are split into a Part A payment of £290 on application and a Part B payment on approval:

Landlord status	Part A	Part B	Total
Accredited	£290	£469	£759
Non-accredited	£290	£660	£950
Less compliant	£290	£1,028	£1,318

Apply on paper rather than online and you'll add up to £113.

Skip the licence altogether and the enforcement powers stack up fast. The council can issue a financial penalty of up to £30,000 without going near a court. It can also prosecute, which carries an unlimited fine and a criminal record. Tenants can pursue a rent repayment order worth up to a full year's rent. Then there's the National Rogue Landlord Database, and a banning order that stops you letting property for at least 12 months.

Read all that and it's easy to assume your Sneinton flat needs one.

It almost certainly doesn't.

Selective licensing bites on private rented housing let under a tenancy, and holiday accommodation is carved out by national law rather than local generosity. Article 2 of the Selective Licensing of Houses (Specified Exemptions) (England) Order 2006 exempts "a tenancy or licence that is granted to a person in relation to his occupancy of a house or a dwelling as a holiday home".

That evidence file is what carries the exemption, so keep the distinction clean. The same house let on an assured shorthold tenancy sits squarely inside the scheme and needs the fee.

Two details aren't published on the council's own pages, so treat them as open. The scheme page carries no ward list, routing you to the MyProperty map instead, and it states no licence duration. Do check your address on that map before you conclude either way.

Nottingham Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all of that and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to deal with, and this is the layer that has moved most since 2024. Nothing in the table below is collected by Airbnb, Vrbo or Booking.com on your behalf. No UK jurisdiction appears on Airbnb's list of places where it collects and remits accommodation tax, so every line here is yours.

Charge	Rate in 2026	Who collects it
Income tax on letting profit	Your marginal rate, as an ordinary UK property business	HMRC, through Self Assessment
VAT on the nightly rate	20%, once taxable turnover passes £90,000 in 12 months	HMRC, once you register
Council tax	Your band, doubled where the property is a second home	Nottingham City Council
Business rates, instead of council tax	Rateable value at 43.2p, with 100% relief below £12,000	Nottingham City Council
Tourist or occupancy tax	None in Nottingham in 2026	Nobody

Income Tax

The change that reset the maths for every English host is the abolition of the furnished holiday lettings regime, effective "on or after 6 April 2025 for Income Tax and for Capital Gains Tax" and from 1 April 2025 for corporation tax. Four advantages went with it: loan interest is now restricted to basic rate, capital allowances on new expenditure are gone, the trading-asset reliefs from capital gains tax are withdrawn, and the income no longer counts as relevant UK earnings for pension relief.

Your Nottingham short let is taxed as an ordinary UK property business now, exactly like the flat next door on a twelve-month tenancy.

At the small end, the property allowance exempts the first £1,000 of gross property income. Between £1,000 and £2,500 you contact HMRC, and above £2,500 you register for Self Assessment by 5 October in the following tax year. Letting furnished rooms inside your own home is a different route again, since Rent a Room exempts £7,500 a year, halved to £3,750 where the income is shared.

National Insurance

Most hosts pay none, and the reason is worth understanding rather than assuming. HMRC's National Insurance Manual says "the nature of property letting requires some activity to maintain the investment, but that is not enough to make it gainful employment for self-employed NICs purposes".

Cross into running something hotel-shaped and that flips. HMRC's Property Income Manual draws the line at services "over and above those usually provided by a landlord", distinguishing "the hotelier (who is carrying on a trade)" from "the provider of furnished accommodation (who is not)". Breakfast, cleaning during a stay and regular linen changes are its examples, so if your Nottingham let is closer to a guest house than a key safe, expect Class 2 and Class 4 to follow.

Value Added Tax (VAT)

Holiday and short-stay accommodation is standard-rated at 20%, unlike long residential letting, which is exempt. Registration becomes compulsory once taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling 12 months.

One property rarely reaches that.

A portfolio does, though, and the threshold counts you rather than each address, which is where owners of four or five Nottingham units get caught.

Council Tax

This is the Nottingham-specific number that hurts. The council confirms that "commencing 1st April 2025 a 100% premium was introduced for properties used as second homes", defining a second home as "a property which is not the sole or main residence of any individual for council tax purposes". Nottingham's 2026/27 charges run from £1,836.93 at Band A to £5,510.78 at Band H, with Band D at £2,755.39. Double the band and you have the bill on an investment flat that nobody lives in. At Band D that's £5,510.78 a year.

There are exceptions, and one of them is aimed squarely at holiday accommodation. The premium doesn't apply to seasonal homes "where year-round, permanent occupation is prohibited, specified for use as holiday accommodation or planning condition preventing occupancy for more than 28 days continuously". That exception depends on a restriction attached to the property, not on how you happen to use it. It's narrower than it sounds.

Leave the place empty instead and it gets worse rather than better. Nottingham's empty homes ladder adds 100% between one and five years, 200% between five and ten, and 300% beyond ten.

The way out of council tax altogether is the rating list. A property in England moves onto business rates as self-catering accommodation when it's let commercially for periods of 28 nights or less, was available for at least 140 nights in the last 12 months, and was actually let for at least 70.

Clear those and small business rate relief wipes the bill entirely below a £12,000 rateable value, tapering to nothing at £15,000. The multipliers for 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027 are 43.2p for small business and 48p standard.

Miss the 70 nights, though, and you fall back to council tax with the premium attached. That's the single most expensive mistake available to a Nottingham host, and it's decided by a booking calendar rather than by any officer.

Deductions and Allowances

Deductions now follow ordinary property business rules, so repairs, letting agent and platform fees, insurance, utilities, cleaning and replacement domestic items all remain allowable. The finance cost restriction is the change to model: mortgage interest gets basic-rate relief rather than a full deduction, which lands hardest on a higher-rate taxpayer who bought a Nottingham flat with a big mortgage behind it.

England Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Every one of those tax layers is national, which is a fair summary of English short-let regulation generally: the rules that matter to you were written in Westminster, not Loxley House.

Planning Permission Changes

The much-trailed C5 use class for short-term lets was announced on 19 February 2024 alongside two permitted development rights. No amendment to the Use Classes Order has been made since. Until one is, "material change of use" remains the only test, judged property by property, and any guide telling you your flat is now C5 is describing a press release rather than the law. C5 isn't law yet.

National Registration Scheme

Section 228 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 created a duty to make registration regulations in England and nothing more. Three years on, none exist. The government's registration scheme design statement still describes something "light touch, low cost and simple to use" rather than something you can sign up to, and no launch date, fee or duty to display a number has been published. Be aware that a Nottingham host will be registering eventually, so treat any article quoting a date as guesswork rather than planning around it.

90-Day Limit in London

Letting as temporary sleeping accommodation in Greater London is a material change of use under the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1973, unless the nights in a calendar year "does not exceed ninety" and the provider was liable for council tax. It has no equivalent anywhere in Nottinghamshire, and nobody outside Greater London can adopt one without new legislation.

Tax Obligations

Beyond your own return, platforms now report you. Under the reporting rules in force since 2024, digital platforms send HMRC annual data on their sellers' earnings, so any gap between what you declare and what Airbnb reports is visible without an investigation.

Health and Safety

The fire, gas and electrical duties described earlier are UK-wide safety law, and they don't soften because a property is small or occasionally let.

The rest of the UK diverges sharply on licensing, mind you. Scotland has required a council-issued short-term let licence since October 2022, and Wales opens a free register with the Welsh Revenue Authority in October 2026, with a 31 March 2027 deadline. England requires none of it.

Does Nottingham Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Enforcement is where the absence of a rulebook cuts both ways, because a council can only enforce what it has written down. In Nottingham that means planning enforcement and housing licensing, and the two run at very different intensities.

Planning enforcement is candid about its capacity. Its page investigates "the use of buildings without planning permission", then adds that "due to current resourcing pressures, our initial response time to Planning Enforcement enquiries is up to 21 days", with listed buildings and protected trees prioritised ahead of everything else. A short-let complaint isn't in that priority list, so expect a wait.

Nobody should read a slow queue as a safe one, though, because the clock runs long in your neighbour's favour. Section 171B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 gives English councils ten years to act, up from four for most breaches, a change the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act made and which took effect on 25 April 2024.

Ignore an enforcement notice once it lands and section 179 turns it criminal. The court is required to "have regard to any financial benefit which has accrued or appears likely to accrue" from the breach, so the profit you made is an input into the fine. That offence can also be charged again by reference to each further period. It isn't a one-time fine, then, and that's exactly where owners get badly hurt.

Housing licensing enforcement is the sharper instrument, and it's the one to respect. A £30,000 civil penalty needs no court, and a rent repayment order can hand back a full year's rent. Watch out for the trap there: if the council's view is that you're running a private rented home rather than a holiday let, you're inside a scheme whose penalties dwarf anything planning can do.

There's also a newer channel that Nottingham hasn't joined. On 8 July 2026 the government announced a data-sharing partnership with Airbnb covering over 450,000 properties, which surfaced 470 potential fraud cases and around 5,800 social homes suspected of illegal subletting. The named participants are London authorities, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Anglesey. Nottingham isn't among them today, though a scheme built this way tends to widen.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Nottingham

None of that enforcement risk is hard to sidestep, as long as you settle the questions in the right order. The early steps decide whether the later ones are worth paying for, so working out of sequence tends to waste both money and months.

1. Read your lease, mortgage and insurance first. These can end the plan outright and cost nothing to check. Written consent, or a written refusal, before you spend anything else.
2. Check the property on the MyProperty map. You're looking for whether the address sits inside the selective licensing designation and whether an Article 4 direction applies to it.
3. Decide honestly what the use will look like. Occasional letting of your own home is a different planning question from a purpose-bought flat running most of the year.
4. Buy a steer if the answer is unclear. £120 or £500 of pre-application advice, or £305 for a certificate on a proposed use, is cheap against a £610 retrospective application and an enforcement file.
5. Build the safety pack before the first booking. Recorded fire risk assessment, annual gas safety check, electrical report, holiday let insurance with public liability.
6. Sort out the rating question early. Aim deliberately at 140 available and 70 let nights if you want business rates, and budget for doubled council tax if you won't reach them.
7. Register with HMRC and start the records on day one. Self Assessment by 5 October in the following tax year, plus a nights-and-income log you can produce on request.
8. Diarise a VAT review. Once turnover across everything you own nears £90,000 in a rolling 12 months, the 20% starts, and it applies to the whole nightly rate.
9. Model it before you buy. Run the address through BNBCalc with the council tax premium or the business rates line included, since a doubled band can be the difference between a yield and a hobby.

Who to Contact in Nottingham about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, five teams handle almost everything between them, and knowing which one owns your question saves a fair bit of time on hold.

Planning and change of use

• Email: [email protected], or [email protected] to comment on a live application
• Phone: 0115 876 4447, choosing option 2 then option 5 for payments
• Online: applications and case history at publicaccess.nottinghamcity.gov.uk
• Note: the council's contact page says staff are working from home and can't currently take postal comments on applications

Planning enforcement

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 0115 876 4447
• Post: Planning, LH Box 5, Loxley House, Station Street, Nottingham, NG2 3NG
• Expect: an initial response of up to 21 days, per the council's own enforcement page

Housing licensing

Nottingham routes selective, additional and mandatory licensing questions through a form rather than a phone line. The Housing Licensing contact form is the published channel, and the selective licensing pages carry the fee schedule and the designated-area map. No direct email or phone number for this team is published on those pages.

Council tax

• Phone: 0115 718 1777, open 9am to 5pm on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
• Automated payments: 0800 052 0173, 24 hours
• Post: Admail 4270, Nottingham, NG1 9YZ
• Online: the secure MyAccount service, per the council tax contact page

Valuation Office Agency

Whether your property belongs in the council tax list or the rating list is a Valuation Office question rather than a Nottingham City Council one. The VOA takes England enquiries on 03000 501 501, open 9am to 4:30pm on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and 10am to 4:30pm on Wednesday.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Nottingham on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Those contact routes tell you what the council thinks it's responsible for. What hosts themselves say is harder to source honestly, so here's the basis for this section. Reddit blocks automated access, and its developer terms don't permit the commercial use this would need, so no Reddit thread was read for this guide and nothing below is quoted from a host forum.

What I can do instead is name the three questions Nottingham owners keep having to answer, each drawn from the council's own records rather than from anyone's opinion.

The first one isn't licensing at all. It's the council tax premium, because it's the one number that changed and it changed by 100%. A Band C flat that carries £2,449.23 in 2026/27 as somebody's home carries £4,898.46 as a second home, so the 70-night business rates threshold becomes the thing you organise a calendar around. Clearing it is the only lawful way out.

The second question is the levy that keeps almost happening. Nottingham's Accommodation Business Improvement District ballot failed on 27 November 2025, and the declaration is worth reading for how close it was: 23 votes cast, 11 in favour, and a majority against by headcount but not by aggregate rateable value.

Local reporting since then describes a revised £2 per room per night scheme going back to Full Council on 13 July 2026, aiming at a January 2027 start. I couldn't read the council report itself, because Nottingham's committee site refused connections throughout this research, so treat the revival as press reporting rather than settled policy.

Remember that a BID levy is "payable by ratepayers, in addition to the Business Rates", and Nottingham's city-centre BID sets its floor at a £35,000 rateable value. A single flat sits far below that, so it wouldn't pay even if the ballot passes.

The third question is planning, and Nottingham's own pages make it the easiest one to misread. Read the Article 4 direction, see "change of use needs permission", and it's a short step to assuming it captures holiday lets. It doesn't. It captures HMOs, and conflating the two sends an owner off to apply for the wrong thing entirely.

There's one more thing to keep an eye on while you plan around any of it. The Greater Nottingham Strategic Plan was submitted for examination on 22 December 2025 by Nottingham City, Broxtowe and Rushcliffe, and hearing sessions closed on 23 July 2026. A new plan is the natural place for a first short-let policy to appear.

None of which changes the underlying lesson here. Where a council has written nothing about short lets, somebody else still sets your costs: a valuation officer, a licensing team, HMRC, or a trade body running a ballot you weren't invited to. Find out which of those has your address on a list before you buy the furniture, because none of them is negotiable afterwards.

For the earnings side of that decision, while the policy side settles, the Nottingham market numbers are the other half of the picture.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a licence to run an Airbnb in Nottingham in 2026?

No. Nottingham City Council operates no short-term let licence, registration scheme or night cap, and England has no national register in force. Section 228 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 created a duty to make registration regulations, but none have been made, and government guidance updated in May 2026 says only that the register is expected to begin in 2026.

Does Nottingham's selective licensing scheme apply to holiday lets?

No. Selective licensing applies to private rented homes let under a tenancy, and article 2 of the Selective Licensing of Houses (Specified Exemptions) (England) Order 2006 exempts a tenancy or licence granted for occupancy of a dwelling as a holiday home. Nottingham's scheme covers over 30,000 privately rented homes in a designated area, so the same house let on an assured shorthold tenancy would need a licence costing £759 to £1,318.

Will a Nottingham short-term let pay council tax or business rates?

It depends on how hard the property works. A property moves onto business rates as self-catering accommodation when it is let commercially in periods of 28 nights or less, was available for at least 140 nights over 12 months, and was actually let for at least 70. Below that it stays in council tax, and a second home attracts Nottingham's 100% premium, doubling a £2,755.39 Band D bill to £5,510.78.

Does Nottingham charge a tourist tax on Airbnb stays?

Not in 2026. England has no legal power to create a tourist tax, and Nottingham has no occupancy levy. A proposed Accommodation Business Improvement District, which would have charged accommodation businesses a levy, was rejected in a ballot on 27 November 2025 by 12 votes to 11. A revised £2 per room per night proposal has been reported for a possible start in January 2027, and BID levies fall on rateable value rather than on hosts generally.

Do you need planning permission for a short-term let in Nottingham?

Possibly, and it turns on use rather than advertising. England has no short-term let use class, so a council asks only whether the use of the building has materially changed. Occasional letting of your own home rarely crosses that line, while a flat let commercially for most of the year can. A Lawful Development Certificate for a proposed use costs £305 in 2026 and settles it in writing.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.