The Devon Housing Commission (DHC) has told ministers to introduce measures to manage holiday lets and help tackle the county’s housing shortage.

The DHC, which was launched recently by Devon’s local authorities and the University of Exeter, told ministers that the ‘dramatic reduction’ in homes to rent, particularly in tourist hotspots, was an ‘urgent concern’.

Commissioners said the fall in private lettings could be attributed ‘in no small part’ to a rapid increase in short-term, Airbnb-style lettings.

In letters to Michael Gove, Secretary of State for the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), and Lucy Frazer, Secretary of State for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Commission said local people were being left with fewer homes to rent and priced out by landlords buying for short-term lets.

The DLUHC and the DCMS are consulting on two proposals for legislative change, which the Commission said it supported.

The first is a requirement for registration of short-term lettings, which the DHC said was necessary to help local authorities and bodies like itself to ‘establish the facts’.

The other is for ‘change of use’ planning consent to be required for any new short-term letting, which the Commission said would enable councils to decide how many more holiday lettings of a particular kind should be created in their area.

The Government should also go further and pursue measures to reform current tax and regulatory arrangements for short-term lettings, the DHC said.