The seaside resort residents say is plagued by prostitution and noise
It's a popular seaside resort which boasts a promenade, beach and rides, but residents have told how their lives are being made hell.
People living in Blackpool say their lives are being blighted by anti-social behaviour, noise disturbances and even prostitution. They raised their concerns as tens of thousands of holiday-makers are set to flood Britain's resorts and tourist hot spots for the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.
In England, the short-term let sector is unregulated, except in London where there's a 90-day per year cap on letting out properties, SWNS reports.
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Blackpool City Council says it's received just one complaint about short-term lets since 2019 – but the council doesn't know how many are in the area.
A total of 16 planning enforcement notices have been issued in the same period.
Residents of the seaside resort town, known for its traditional B&Bs, tell a different story.
Saima Arif, 41, has operated three hotels in Blackpool's town centre for eight years.
She says the proliferation of AirBNBs and other short-term lets, where owners are not present, have brought the character of the street down – with rooms being used for parties until the early hours of the morning and even prostitution.
She said: 'The ones now, there's nobody there. If somebody's booked a double room, they know the code. If they meet friends with a girl, they use that code, go in, use the room, and go out.
'It's like one person's booked the room, a couple who's out for the night and give the code to another couple. They use the room and just go out after an hour.'
She added: 'The people who ran these places for 20-odd years did it right. As soon as they left, it's like everybody started making their own rules. I'm just thinking 'am I the daft one?''
B&B owners Sandra Spriggs, 52, and husband John, 69, have owned the Bianca Guesthouse on Blackpool's Palatine Road for 20 years.
The couple says they have heard loud stag and hen parties inside unattended AirBNBs.
Sandra said: 'My friend lives next door to an AirBNB. It's bloody noisy, especially in the summer – she actually goes to her daughter's for the weekend so she hasn't got to put up with the noise.'
It's not just B&B owners who are concerned.
Marie Fisher, 62, has lived in her flat overlooking Blackpool's south promenade for 20 years. The block, made up mostly of elderly people, was quiet for years. Now, she lives above an AirBNB.
Marie, who works at Blackpool tourist attraction Madame Tussauds, wants to see short-term lets like AirBNBs banned from residential building blocks.
She said: 'You can't go down and knock on the door, you don't know what you're going to be faced with, to be honest with you. It's just frustrating. You try and sleep through it and hope they're only here for one night and going to go.
'Over the space of a week, you could have no-one, or you could have three lots of people. I think the worst thing was when we had rap music blaring out until the early hours, two or three, Eminem blasting out at that time. It was so loud.
'It's stressful, no two ways about it, especially when it starts in the beginning of the night and you think 'oh, here we go again'.'
Tourist organisation StayBlackpool's Ian White, 64, says short-term lets from companies like Booking.com have been on his radar since 2014.
He's heard from families who have been forced to leave their own homes and sleep overnight in a camper van just to escape the disruption of short-term lets.
Despite this, Ian says the town is currently experiencing an oversupply of beds as it struggles to compete with foreign package holiday deals.
Because of this, many guesthouses are now turning to house people from out of the area and prisoners on early release, which can give more consistent income.
The 64-year-old said: 'They bring in a certain amount of antisocial behaviour and other issues. Some traditional holiday accommodation have started to lose business, where regular guests won't come back.'
Ian wants short-term let accommodation to be subject to the same rules as guesthouses in an effort to tackle the oversupply and help bring the guesthouses back to normal operations.
He added: 'Blackpool is looking quite vulnerable.'
Of 15 local councils in England and Scotland, including Blackpool, Glasgow, Manchester, Westminster, and the Isle of Wight, none knew how many AirBNBs were in their area, according to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Only Manchester provided a figure, 98 in 2022, but it said this was 'informally recorded' in 2022 and that the true figure was 'likely to be significantly higher'.
Westminster Council also said it knew about properties when a complaint had been made.
Residents across the country been making hundreds of complaints about noise, rubbish, parking, and other issues with short-term let properties.
Since 2019, a total of 12,891 complaints about short-term lets were received by the 15 councils which answered a Freedom of Information Act request – the bulk of which were in the City of Westminster, which received 11,459.
This was followed by Glasgow, at 463, and Brighton at 264. Manchester was the next highest, at 225, and Liverpool was at 161.
Some councils, such as Manchester, issue informal warnings if a complaint is received, but most do not.
AirBNB, Blackpool City Council, and the Ministry of Housing have been contacted for comment.
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