Short Stay Letting And Home Hosted Accommodation Local Law – Operational Review 2024/2025

Amelia Lorentson16:27

Thank you for the discussion, tottenham. Thank you for the discussion Tom. All in favour? Thanks. Then let's move on to the. Which is item 7.2, short stay, wedding and home hosted accommodation in local law, operational review 2024-2025. Unfortunately, Nick has been very good and instrumental in this space. Unfortunately, he's not here today, so we have Director of Planning, Richard MacGillivray, welcome, and Patrick Murphy. I'll hand it over to both of you if you want to just start with the introduction and what recommendation is for before approval.

Thank you. It is unfortunate that Nick's not here. He's been a real driving force of the team for the past 18 months or so, and certainly with this operational review there's a lot of credit to the outcome review lies with Nick. So it is unfortunate that he can't be here today to talk to you about all the great work that he's done. I will try and pick up the pieces, so to speak. But going back to the beginning in February 1, 2022 is when the local law commenced. It was developed to regulate and manage short-stay letting to reduce the impacts on permanent residents and residential amenity. After 12 months, a review was undertaken. You may recall in March, 23, a report sorry, was presented 2020, to Council, supportive of how the local law was operating and being implemented. Notwithstanding, there were certainly some challenges with the team and with the resourcing of the team and having some continuity around the team and when the new Director came on board 2024 it was identified a need for a review of the operation of the local law. Again, there were times when Richard commenced that we only had one officer in the team. We had some real challenges in retaining staff and we had some real challenges in acquiring new staff. And I must say that you know around that time Nick came on board as well and has driven a lot of change and a lot of improvement in the team and you I think you'll see that through some of the actions that have been implemented it's recognised in the report I'll get to that in a moment. So so initially there was a workshop that was held with Councillors at which time the operational status was presented in addition to the proposed scope of the operational review with the purpose being to evaluate the operation of the local law to determine if any changes are required or opportunities available to increase the effectiveness of the local law in terms of the current status at that time there's this figure of five thousand two hundred and sixty five properties has always been put out there as number of properties that were thought to be operating short-term accommodation within the Shire that included a number of properties which the local law exempts from requiring an approval so it was estimated initially that there was a baseline of four thousand properties requiring an approval the current status today is three thousand and eighty five properties have an approval the team have worked through the list of the four thousand properties and through that process 421 properties identified as no longer operating and have they vetted that full list so that the number of approvals that have now been obtained is generally reflective of the amount that require an approval if that makes sense. Of those 3,085 properties 2,349 are duplex or multiple dwellings and 97% of all approvals relate to short stay letting with only 3% being home hosted. Since 2022,339 approvals have been cancelled by property owners or by Council the majority of which were dwelling houses. In terms of compliance, 87% of properties have not received a complaint. Over the recent quarter it was identified that 96% of complaints had been responded to within the required 30 minutes. There's been an increasing increase in compliance action. Activities over the journey, such that now a total of 386 compliance notices have been issued and 169 infringements being issued as well. So in terms of the review itself, it was identified to form a stakeholder group similar to the initial review that took place after 12 months, so a number of the same groups were involved and those, they were, the stakeholder group consisted of residential groups, resort managers, property managers and a planning consultant. And terms in of think residential I think there was five or six residential groups who were representing quite a large number of residents within each group. So we've had a good cross-section of, I suppose, different industries and a good number of people involved, representing a good number of people. The review. Certainly we'd like to thank the stakeholders for their participation in the review. The feedback that they've been able to provide through the survey and their engagement throughout the process has been fantastic. So initially there was an initial consultation with the stakeholder groups, individual sessions in which the current operational status of the team was presented and there were some conversations around significant issues potential improvements and how the process of the review would be undertaken a survey was prepared and sent out to the stakeholders in which had 23 questions the stakeholders some of the stakeholders forwarded those the survey on to other members of their groups and whatnot and we ended up with 92 responses so when we received the survey responses that the feedback was analysing and including a review of the improvements and a number of you know operational improvements were identified from this analysis the key themes that came from the survey were the 24/7 hotline compliance activities opportunities to improve education and awareness general administration of the local law and advocacy opportunities so 31 initiatives were identified 13 of those actions have already been implemented so low-hanging fruit you might like to call them things that were quick wins that we saw that we would be able to implement not necessarily wait to the end of the review and so they have been implemented they include activities such as collaborate collaborating with the police to enhance the opportunity for complaints that go to the police to be able to contact the relevant owner or contact person continuing to actively investigate all hotline complaints the next working day and this involves the team listening to the calls calling the complainant calling the people have been you know the contact person a real thorough investigation changes to scripting through the hotline inclusion of a text prioritising properties with complaint histories for investigation um so yeah a range of activities have been implemented, sort of on the ground activities, which have certainly, as I said earlier, the team improvement from when Nick has come on board and when this review has started is quite significant. The team's in a, I think in a much better space. We've got much more consistent or improved data collection mechanisms in place, so it's much more reliable data over the past 18 months that we're relying on and you know a well-resourced team that are able to be responsive to complaints as they occur and also responsive in terms of undertaking proactive compliance. Remaining so the remaining actions the key actions to be implemented and you'll see the report details these actions and it also has an attachment with a timeline for their implementations is you know continued rigour around the hotline performance it's a very important front gate or and representation of Council to people making complaints so certainly ongoing meetings with the hotline ongoing review of their performance to ensure that it meets community expectations significantly a review of the three categories we heard um you know and for some time quite loud and clear from the resort managers what they feel is a form of inequity through the fee category process and the amount of work that's probably being undertaken by the team in relation to complaints coming out of the resort so we see that as a body of work that we need to undertake as a priority it may take some time to work through that and to understand the different nuances of how a management regime is established a resort to validate a different fee category and also you know the importance of targeted audits you know being on complaint data being a review of compliance with scale and intensity and general compliance with the local law provisions so I think that sums up the process and the report findings. The recommendation is that note that the review has been completed and agreed to implement the actions within section 5 of the report.

Well the challenge you would have is how do you determine which properties are going to have problems I guess in the future so whilst we've got the data based on what we know I guess the process is really is a there's a registration element so we know all the properties that are our short stay letting itself but also it's the mechanisms that are put in place to prevent and manage some of those issues arising in the first place so obviously the rigorous process through the application assessment process ensures that those properties and you're right many of them we don't receive a complaint but we would like to think that a lot of those properties have put in a lot of those practices that are required under the local law to prevent there being complaints in the first place so the renewal process whilst has it a fairly modest fee for particularly those in multi-dwelling units two hundred dollars it gives us that ability to monitor and manage all of the complaints and issues across the Shire so essentially it's a fee sort of reflect where the effort is and the complaint data gives you a bit of an indication to where the majority of the hotline issues and the effort is required from the team but there is a more broader element of monitoring and understanding the scale and changes over time as well so there's a an element of not just the regulation and enforcement but there's also setting the permit conditions and administering that consistently across which has a cost to it as well. So have we done a deep dive and analysed the property types g whether it's drug and-fixes, home hosting, etc. Optics and rates whether it's expensive or cheaper. Optics and numbers whether it's places where there's more than say two families or three families or whether just a people issue. And look at geographical distribution of the short stay accommodation across Noosa to help understand whether there's trees. So rather than.