Short-Term Let Rules in Cardiff and Wales: What to Check

Short-term letting in Wales sits across several sets of rules at once: how a property is rated for tax, whether its use needs planning permission, and what safety duties apply to it. This page sets out what the official sources say, links them, and says who to ask about the things only they can confirm for one address.

What this page can and cannot tell you

It can tell you what the national criteria say and where they are published. It can tell you which questions decide the outcome for a property, and who holds the answer to each.

It cannot tell you whether your property meets a threshold, whether a change of use at your address needs permission, or which safety duties attach to your particular premises and letting arrangement. Those turn on facts about one property, and no page that has never seen it can settle them. Where this page used to answer them anyway, it was wrong to.

Business rates or council tax: the day thresholds

Whether a self-catering property in Wales is rated as non-domestic — and so billed business rates rather than council tax — turns on a set of criteria published by Business Wales, which took effect on 1 April 2023. In summary, the property must be:

• let on a commercial basis, and with a view to the realisation of profits;
• available for letting commercially as self-catering accommodation for short periods totalling 252 days or more in the following 12-month period, with the ratepayer's interest in the property allowing that letting;
• available for letting commercially as self-catering accommodation for short periods totalling 252 days or more in the 12 months before the day being considered; and
• actually let commercially for short periods totalling at least 182 days in that period.

A property that does not satisfy the criteria is likely to be treated as domestic and liable for council tax instead. The same Business Wales page records two changes that apply from 1 April 2026: where 182 days has not been reached in the most recent 12 months, an average of the days a property was actually commercially let over the past two of three years may be taken as evidence of compliance; and an allowance of up to 14 days a year for short breaks donated to charity, let through a registered charity, may count towards the letting criteria.

On council tax, the position is split between national and local. The maximum premium a local authority in Wales is able to charge on second homes and long-term empty homes is 300% of the standard rate — that ceiling is set nationally. Whether an authority applies a premium at all, and at what level, is decided locally by that authority. So the ceiling is a published fact and Cardiff's own figure is a question for Cardiff Council.

Two things worth saying plainly. The criteria are about days, not about revenue, and meeting them is not automatically the better outcome for any particular owner — which route costs less depends on the property's valuation, any relief available and the owner's own circumstances, which is a question for an accountant. And there is no number on this page you can use to work out what your property will do.

Planning and change of use

Planning is decided locally. Whether a change in how a property is used needs permission depends on the property and on what is actually being proposed, and the authority that decides it is the one that can tell you: Cardiff Council publishes both a starting point for the question and the route to a formal answer, and both are linked in the sources below.

The practical advice is the same whatever the answer turns out to be. Ask about the specific address rather than about short-term letting in general, ask before committing money, and keep the reply in writing. A lease, a freeholder, a managing agent, a mortgage lender and an insurer can each also restrict short-term letting independently of planning, and each of those is a separate question to a separate party.

The distinction matters more generally. The Welsh Government sets the framework and the rating criteria for the whole of Wales; which controls are actually in force over one address — planning, licensing, registration, parking permit schemes — is decided and recorded locally. A national power existing is not the same as a local control being in force, and this page will not treat the first as evidence of the second.

Safety duties

On fire safety, the Welsh Government publishes guidance written for exactly this kind of property. Make your guest accommodation safe from fire was first published on 26 July 2023 and last updated on 18 September 2023, and it links a guide, A guide to making your guest accommodation safe from fire, covering small places to stay such as bed and breakfasts and self-catering properties. Both are linked below, and the guide is written to be worked through against a particular property rather than read as a checklist that applies to all of them.

Gas, electrical installation and appliance safety are separate duties with their own rules and their own competent-person regimes. This page does not tell you which of them applies to your property, or how often anything must be done, because that depends on the premises, the installations in it and the arrangement under which it is let.

An earlier version of this page did tell you, setting out fixed certificate and testing intervals and a specific list of safety equipment as flat requirements for every short-term let. Those prescriptions have been removed. Stated that way they were either wrong for some properties or right for the wrong reason, and a reader working through a list instead of an assessment can end up compliant on paper and unsafe in fact.

What replaces them is the honest version: establish which duties apply to your property and your letting arrangement, work through the applicable guidance for that property, and use a competent person both for the work and for the advice on what is needed. Where you are not sure whether a duty applies, that uncertainty is itself a reason to get advice rather than to assume either way.

What stays with the owner

All of it, as far as legal duties go. Confirming your planning, licensing and registration position, your lease and mortgage terms, your insurance cover and the safety duties attaching to the property is the owner's responsibility, and management does not change that. It is listed among the things that stay with you on our pricing page and in the scope on our South Wales management page.

What Graphite Host does is operational: guests, cleaning and changeovers, listings, pricing support and maintenance coordination, and arranging safety work with local contractors when you ask us to. Arranging a job is not the same as holding the duty behind it. We do not take on your legal responsibilities and we could not assume them if we wanted to, so nobody should choose a manager — us or anyone else — on the basis that it makes the compliance question go away.

If you are at the earlier stage of working out whether a property suits short-term letting at all, our guide on whether a property is suitable for serviced accommodation covers the practical side, and comparing Cardiff areas for a short-term let covers access, parking and building rules area by area.

Questions owners ask

Sources, and when they were checked

Every statement above about the rating criteria and the fire-safety guidance comes from one of these, read on 28 October 2026. Cardiff Council's pages are listed because they are the authority to ask about a Cardiff address, not because anything here is sourced from them.

• Business Wales: Non-domestic rates for self-catering properties in Wales — The availability and letting day criteria, and the council tax premium maximum.
• Welsh Government: Make your guest accommodation safe from fire — First published 26 July 2023, last updated 18 September 2023. Links the guide below.
• A guide to making your guest accommodation safe from fire (PDF) — Welsh Government guidance for small places to stay, including self-catering property.
• Cardiff Council: Do I need planning permission? — The council's own starting point for a change-of-use question. Ask about your address.
• Cardiff Council: Planning permission — How to apply, and who to contact for a written answer about a specific property.