Running short lets in Brighton and Hove, where the council wants tighter rules
If you manage or clean short lets in Brighton, you're working in a city where the council's own estimates put the homes advertised to visitors at somewhere between 2,000 and 6,000, while only about 400 were registered as businesses when councillors looked at it in June 2025. Since then the council has asked the government for powers to license them and to be one of the councils that test the new national register. Upbridge's AI operations assistant, Cleo, works over WhatsApp with vacation rental operators and cleaning companies and organizes the cleanings and the inventory for each place.
The rules here
Brighton and Hove doesn't have a short-let scheme of its own yet, so what applies today is the law for all of England. We checked all of this on 23 October 2026.
| Topic | What it says | Status | Since | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| England's rules | The end of the furnished holiday lettings tax rules, the fire guide and business rates apply in Brighton as in the rest of England. The national register comes later, in March 2027 if the government's date holds. All of them are on the England page. | In force | 6 April 2025 (tax) | England |
| What the council asked for | In June 2025 the council's cabinet agreed to lobby the government for powers to license short lets and asked ministers to change planning rules. It also agreed to gather evidence on controls through the City Plan, such as conditions that stop new homes or conversions becoming holiday lets, and zones where lets are allowed, restricted or banned. | No specific law | June 2025 | Brighton and Hove News |
| Trial of the register | In March 2026 a council report said the government was still building the online platform for the register and meant to test it with a number of councils, and Brighton and Hove wants to be one of them. We found no announcement that it has been picked. | Not yet in force | March 2026 | Landlord Today |
This is not legal or tax advice, and Upbridge does not file anything for you: no registrations and no tax returns.
How it works on the ground
Nobody has a firm count. The councillors' task and finish group found up to 6,000 homes advertised on Airbnb and Booking.com, and Gill Williams, the cabinet member for housing, quoted a snapshot from about 18 months earlier of more than 4,000 Airbnbs available at any one time, three quarters of them whole homes.
May is the long month. VisitBrighton lists the Brighton Festival from 2 to 25 May in 2026, the Fringe all month and The Great Escape from 13 to 16 May, and the Marathon fell on Sunday 12 April. For a cleaning team that means weeks of back-to-back changeovers rather than one busy weekend, so linen and supplies need to be counted before the month starts, not halfway through it.
Pride works the other way round. In 2026 it ran on 1 and 2 August, and if your bookings follow it they'll start and end on the same days, so every flat has to be ready on the Friday and most of them turn over on the Monday.
Gatwick says Brighton is 30 minutes away by Southern, Thameslink or Gatwick Express, so a guest whose flight lands late can be at your door not long after, and that's when clear instructions for getting in matter, because nobody wants to ring the owner at midnight.
Where Upbridge fits
Brighton is where Upbridge's founders started, working with cleaning companies. For a Pride weekend, every checkout on the calendar turns into its own cleaning with a room-by-room photo checklist, whether you're on Guesty, Hostaway, Lodgify, Uplisting or plain iCal, so you see from your phone which flats are done.
For the guest coming in from Gatwick, we build the guest guide with directions and how to get in, and they open it on their phone on the train. Before May, inventory per property tells you what's running low, because it's deducted after each stay.
If you run a cleaning company in Brighton
Your hardest weeks are set by the city's calendar more than by any one client. The account for cleaning companies puts every owner's calendar in one place, so you can see the Pride weekend changeovers for all your clients together, and each client stays yours.
Questions about short lets in Brighton
How many short lets are there in Brighton and Hove?
The council's estimates run from 2,000 to 6,000 homes, according to Landlord Today in March 2026. A councillors' group found only about 400 registered as businesses in June 2025.
Does Brighton and Hove council license Airbnbs?
Not yet. In June 2025 the cabinet agreed to ask the government for licensing powers, and in March 2026 the council said it wanted to be one of the councils that test the government's register.
When is Brighton Pride in 2026?
VisitBrighton lists Brighton and Hove Pride on 1 and 2 August 2026.
Sources
Checked on 23 October 2026
- Brighton and Hove News, Sarah Booker-Lewis, “Councillors back tighter rules for Airbnbs”, 26 June 2025.
- Landlord Today, Graham Norwood, “Airbnb licensing scheme could be trialled by Labour council”, 18 March 2026.
- VisitBrighton, “26 for 2026”, 17 December 2025.
- Gatwick Airport, “By train”, undated, read 23 October 2026.