Noosa Council has unveiled a new online dashboard to help the community to monitor the operation and regulation of Noosa’s short-stay local law.
The Short Stay Local Law Snapshot, to be updated quarterly on council’s website, is part of a suite of initiatives that council has introduced since July 2020 to tackle the challenge of controlling the growth of short stay accommodation.
Noosa was the first council in Queensland to introduce a local law to regulate and manage the ongoing use of short stay letting through a framework, following calls from residents to address the impacts on permanent residents and residential amenity
Mayor Clare Stewart said responding to the community’s concerns has been instrumental in developing methods to proactively deal with the short-stay issue.
“As we were the first council in Queensland to tackle this issue, it continues to be a learning process and adjustments are required, but the release of this snapshot is a great initiative for our community and provides clarity on where things are at, regarding the local law operation,” she said.
“We are only two years into the process.”
Council’s Director Development and Regulation Richard Macgillivray said the focus was now about stepping up compliance activities.
“Our staff continue to action all complaints received and, the emphasis is now focussed on increasing compliance activities across the shire,” he said.
“Whilst we acknowledge there is more to be done, we are observing that guests and short stay letting operators are becoming acutely aware of the importance of preserving residential amenity.”
Of the 2599 Short Stay Local Law approvals issued, more than 85 per cent have relied on a current planning approval with the remainder demonstrating the establishment of existing use rights. During this term of council, 24 applications involving short stay accommodation have been decided by the full council, of which 14 were approved and 10 refused.
The newly released statistical dashboard provides data on current approval numbers, how many compliance notices and fines have been issued, number of applications refused, the suburbs with the most approvals and how many calls to the short stay hotline.
The latest statistics indicate calls to the hotline dropped significantly in December 2023, compared to those recorded in December 2022.
Mr Macgillivray said the 64 per cent drop is a positive sign during the peak tourism season.
“Sixteen fines and 127 compliance notices have been issued since February 2022, with most breaches for an operator failing to respond to a complaint within the 30-minute time limit, imposed as part of the approval conditions,” Mr Macgillivray said.
There were 592 calls specifically about short stay matters to the hotline in 2023 compared to 375 from February 2022 (when the local law started) to December 2022.
“We are always looking for ways to improve what we do, last year we reviewed the Short-Stay Local Law – as we said we would do,
“We intend to update the information every quarter on our website, so it is easily accessible, for the community,” Mr Macgillivary said.
