How to Keep a 90-Night Short-Let Log for a Greater London Home

One booking screen already shows a night total for this home. Stays from other channels are not in it, and that screen total is not the sum. For one residential premises in Greater London, keep a single log from 1 January to 31 December. Each stay goes in with its dates, the nights the home was used, and the channel: a named platform or a direct booking. Two conditions apply to that sum. The nights of use in the calendar year do not exceed ninety, and at least one person who provided the accommodation was liable for council tax at the property.

This log is not a council-tax notice between tenancies, not freeholder consent, and not an insurer occupancy email. A landlord’s permission, a mortgage lender’s letter, bin arrangements, a fire note, and a word to neighbours are separate papers.

Disclaimer: IziRento is operations software, not legal advice. Local tenancy rules vary; check a qualified adviser for binding decisions.

A platform total is not the year’s nights

The figure on a single booking site is only the nights that site has recorded. A weekend booked elsewhere, and a stay arranged directly with the guest, are missing from it. Those nights of use belong in one sum, for this premises, in this calendar year. Moving the listing to another platform does not start the count again.

Section 25 of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1973 restricts the use of residential premises in Greater London as temporary sleeping accommodation. The explanatory notes to the Deregulation Act 2015 treat that use as a material change of use, which means a change that needs planning permission. They place the restriction in the 32 London boroughs and the City, even when only part of the premises is used that way. The log records nights of use of the premises.

Section 44 of the Deregulation Act 2015 inserts section 25A into the 1973 Act. It came into force on 26 May 2015. Section 25A(1) says that, despite section 25(1), use as temporary sleeping accommodation does not involve a material change of use if two conditions are met. The first, in section 25A(2), is the sum of the nights of use and any previous nights of use of the same premises in the same calendar year, and that sum does not exceed ninety. Section 25A(4) says it does not matter whether any previous use was by the same person. A sum of 90 nights still meets the first condition. A sum of 91 does not meet it.

City Hall states the same night condition: the nights must not add up to more than 90 in a calendar year, from 1 January to 31 December. Unless planning permission is obtained, that is a maximum of 90 nights. More than 90 nights needs permission from the local council where the property sits. The count is nights the property was used, not nights a listing stayed online.

The second condition is council-tax liability for the person who provided the accommodation. Section 25A(3) applies to the nights of the current use, counted under section 25A(2)(a). Earlier nights still go into the year sum under section 25A(2)(b).

For each night under section 25A(2)(a), the person who provided the accommodation was liable for council tax under Part 1 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 for the premises, or at least one of them was if more than one person provided the night. City Hall says at least one provider must be liable for council tax at the property. The explanatory notes say this includes someone who is liable and receives a discount, so a discounted bill can still be the paper. A business-rates bill is not that paper. A letter telling the council that a tenancy has started or ended is a different paper.

If the home is outside Greater London, this log does not apply. City Hall says its guide is different for people living outside the capital, and the explanatory notes say the new sections apply only to London.

Registration is a separate scheme from this count. GOV.UK guidance on letting a self-catering holiday home in England, last updated 2 October 2026, says a mandatory national registration scheme for short-term lets is not yet in force and is expected to begin in March 2027. There is no registration number to put on this log.

City Hall says letting in breach of the law risks planning enforcement action by the local council, and neither that guide nor section 44 states a fine or a fee. A neighbour may be asked to keep a log of activity where a breach is suspected. That diary is not this year log.

Ninety consecutive nights are a different test

Before a stay is written into the log, the two meanings of ninety have to stay separate. City Hall defines temporary sleeping accommodation as sleeping accommodation occupied by the same person for less than 90 consecutive nights, in return for money, money’s worth, or that person’s employment. The explanatory notes use the same test, and add that the stay may come with services or without them, for a consideration by way of trade, or because of the occupant’s employment, whether or not that creates the relationship of landlord and tenant. “Less than 90 consecutive nights” describes that use. It is not the total for the calendar year.

A long-term occupier is not a row on this log. Where the home is already lawfully in residential use, City Hall says planning permission is not required to rent it for more than 90 nights at a time. Short-let nights already taken in that calendar year remain in the sum.

One premises, one calendar year

Stays from every channel go on one log for this address.

The file is complete when it holds the calendar-year log — each stay’s dates, the nights of use, the channel, and a running sum that does not exceed ninety — the council-tax liability paper for a person who provided the nights being counted, and either the planning permission that already covers further nights or the one-line note. If the next nights would take the sum over ninety and no permission covers them, stop before that short-let use. If the home is outside Greater London, this log does not apply.

IziRento stores the log, the council-tax paper, and the permission or the note. It does not count the nights, decide the sum, or grant planning permission.

Greater London Authority — short-term and holiday lets