UK Short-Term Rental Register Goes Live Summer 2026: What Your Safety Declarations Must Show

The UK government has confirmed it. A mandatory national registration scheme for all short-term lets in England is expected by summer 2026. Every operator will need a unique property ID. Every property will require safety declarations. The London 90-night cap stays.

If you manage buildings that host short-term lets — hotels with serviced apartment wings, mixed-use residential towers with holiday units, purpose-built student accommodation that flips to summer lets — this affects your compliance calendar and your operational load.

Here is what is coming, what it means for the people who actually run these buildings, and what you can start doing now.

The Registration Scheme: What Has Been Confirmed

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) published its consultation response in early 2025. The headline: a mandatory national registration scheme for short-term lets in England, expected to go live in summer 2026.

Key requirements:

• Unique property ID. Every short-term let must register and receive a unique identifier. This ID must appear on all listings.
• Safety declarations. Operators must declare compliance with gas safety, electrical safety, fire safety, and energy performance standards. This is not a one-off. Declarations must be kept current.
• London 90-night cap remains. The existing restriction on short-term lets in London (no more than 90 nights per calendar year without planning permission) stays in place.
• Data sharing with platforms. Booking platforms (Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo) will be required to verify registration IDs before listing properties.

The scheme applies to England only. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own frameworks. If your portfolio spans the UK, you are managing multiple compliance regimes.

Why This Matters for Building Operators

If you read the consultation response and thought "this is a problem for the owner, not for me", think again.

The safety declarations sit on the operator. But the operator relies on the building's systems to meet those standards. A gas safety certificate means the boiler has been serviced. An electrical safety declaration means the fixed wiring is sound. A fire safety declaration means the alarms, extinguishers and emergency lighting are tested and working.

Who makes sure those things happen? The facilities team.

In a typical short-term let scenario — a serviced apartment block in Manchester city centre, say — the building manager handles the common areas and the core systems. The individual unit owner handles the interior. The registration scheme creates a new layer of accountability. If a unit cannot produce a valid safety declaration, it cannot be listed. If it cannot be listed, the owner loses income. If the owner loses income, they ask the building manager why the common systems are not compliant.

This is not theoretical. We have seen it play out with the Fire Safety Act 2021. That legislation expanded liability for multi-occupied residential buildings. Building owners and managers suddenly had to produce fire risk assessments for structure and cladding, not just common areas. The short-term rental registration scheme creates a similar dynamic for safety compliance.

The London 90-Night Cap: Still Here, Still Enforced

The 90-night cap has been in place since 2015. It limits short-term lets in London to 90 nights per calendar year unless the operator has planning permission for a change of use.

Enforcement has been patchy. Some boroughs actively monitor listings. Others do not. The registration scheme changes that. With a unique property ID and platform verification, enforcement becomes automated. A property that exceeds 90 nights will be visible. The platform will be required to block further bookings.

For building managers in London, this means:

• Units that previously operated above the cap will need to stop or apply for planning permission.
• Mixed-use buildings with short-term lets will need to track occupancy at unit level.
• If your building management platform does not already track unit-level occupancy, it will need to.

This is where a system like Herman becomes useful. Herman can pull data from your BMS, your access control system, and your booking platform to give you a single view of unit occupancy, energy use, and compliance status. You do not need to check three different dashboards. You ask Herman a question in plain English: "How many units in block B have exceeded 80 nights this year?" Herman answers.

Safety Declarations: What You Need to Have Ready

The registration scheme requires operators to declare compliance with:

• Gas safety. Annual gas safety check by a Gas Safe registered engineer. Certificate must be current.
• Electrical safety. Electrical installation condition report (EICR) every five years. Portable appliance testing (PAT) for appliances supplied.
• Fire safety. Working smoke alarms on every floor. Carbon monoxide alarms in rooms with solid fuel appliances. Fire risk assessment for the building (already required under the Fire Safety Act).
• Energy performance. Valid EPC rating of C or above (under current proposals, though this may tighten to B by 2028).

If you manage a building with short-term lets, you need to know the status of every unit against these requirements. Not just the common areas. Every unit.

This is a data problem. A 50-unit serviced apartment block has 50 gas certificates, 50 EICRs, 50 sets of alarm test records, 50 EPCs. Keeping them current and accessible is a full-time job for someone. If you are already using a building management platform, check whether it can store and track compliance documents. If it cannot, you will be managing spreadsheets. Spreadsheets work until someone loses a certificate and a unit gets delisted.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Consider a 120-unit mixed-use building in Birmingham city centre. Ground floor retail. Upper floors: 80 residential units, 40 of which are short-term lets. The building manager is responsible for the common systems — the fire alarm, the emergency lighting, the lifts, the HVAC. The individual unit owners are responsible for their interiors.

Under the registration scheme, the 40 short-term let units each need a unique property ID and current safety declarations. The building manager needs to know that the common systems are compliant, because a fault in the common fire alarm affects every unit's safety declaration. The building manager also needs to know that each unit owner has their own compliance in order, because if a unit is delisted, the owner will ask why.

This is not a hypothetical. This is the reality from summer 2026.

The building manager in this scenario has three options:

1. Track everything manually. Spreadsheets, email reminders, paper files. It works until it does not.
2. Buy a compliance-specific software tool. It handles the documents but does not connect to the building systems.
3. Use a building management platform that handles both. Herman can track compliance documents, monitor building systems, and answer questions about both in plain English.

Option three saves time. More importantly, it reduces the risk of a compliance gap that gets a unit delisted.

Where to Start

If you manage buildings with short-term lets, start now. Do not wait for summer 2026.

• Audit your current compliance records. Do you have current gas certificates, EICRs, fire risk assessments and EPCs for every unit?
• Check your building management platform. Can it track unit-level compliance? Can it alert you when a certificate is about to expire?
• Talk to your unit owners. Make sure they understand the new requirements and their responsibilities.
• Review your London properties. Are any units approaching the 90-night cap? Do you have a way to track this?

The registration scheme is coming. It will add administrative load. It will also create a clear compliance baseline that separates serious operators from the rest. If your systems are already in order, you will be ahead.

If you want to see how Herman handles compliance tracking, energy monitoring, and plain-English queries across your portfolio, talk to the HermanWa team. We work with building operators in the GCC and the UK. We know the regulations. We know the buildings. We know the difference between a compliance checkbox and a building that actually runs well.

— The HermanWa Team