Home · Blog · Registration and licensing

When a UK holiday let becomes a tenancy: winter lets, deposit protection and how to stay on the holiday side of the line

Sergej Sitki · founder of ReceptionGO and host
Published 2 November 2026 · 5 min read

General information, not legal or tax advice. Check your own case with your local council, HMRC or the relevant revenue authority, or an accountant.

A genuine holiday letting is excluded from being an assured tenancy by the Housing Act 1988. The guest has no security of tenure, and the deposit is not protected in a tenancy scheme. If they are living there as their home, it can be an assured shorthold tenancy, and the deposit must be protected within 30 days.

Try ReceptionGO free for 30 days — no card needed. →

November is when the message arrives: a contractor, between tenancies, happy to take the cottage until March at a discount. The income is real. The legal category might not be a holiday let any more, and the consequences sit in four places at once — possession, the deposit, the council-tax bill and VAT.

The holiday exclusion

Paragraph 9 of Schedule 1 to the Housing Act 1988 says a tenancy is not an assured tenancy if the purpose is to confer on the tenant the right to occupy the dwelling for a holiday. A genuine holiday booking — fixed dates, a visitor, a home elsewhere — stays outside the AST regime. You can require them to leave on the morning they booked. A damage deposit does not go into TDS, DPS or mydeposits. The guest register rules still apply, because those cover accommodation provided for reward, holiday or not.

Courts look at purpose, not at the word “holiday” typed at the top of an email. If the arrangement is a home, calling it a holiday let does not make it one.

Signs the stay has crossed the line

One of those signs is a reason to pause. Three of them is a reason to use a proper tenancy agreement, protect the deposit, and tell the insurer and the lender. The expensive version is discovering the category when you need the house back for Easter and they do not leave.

What changes if it is an AST

• Deposit. Protect it within 30 days in an authorised scheme and serve the prescribed information. The penalty for failing is one to three times the deposit. This is the opposite of the holiday-let position in the deposit guide.
• Ending it. Checkout morning is not enough. You need the notice the Housing Act allows, correctly served, and a possession order if they stay. “Holiday let” on the original Airbnb message will not shorten that.
• Council tax and business rates. A property someone occupies as a home is not a second home sitting empty, and a long occupation does not help you prove the 70 nights of commercial short letting. Tell the council. The premium on second homes is explained in the rates guide.
• Tax. Residential rent is outside the holiday-accommodation VAT rules. It is also ordinary property income. Do not keep raising VAT invoices for a tenancy, and do not keep treating it as a holiday let on the self-assessment return.

If you want the winter income and the holiday status

Let it to people who are on holiday, for a stated week or two, at a holiday price, with a checkout. A lower midweek rate in November is still a holiday let. A single occupant from November to March at a rent you would not show on Airbnb is not. If the gap between those two is the difference between covering the mortgage and not, the honest route is a tenancy done properly, or a closed calendar and a different price — the pricing guide is the commercial half of this decision.