Tom Simcock, Edge Hill University

Around 2.8 million households across England casually rented out part of or their entire home on platforms such as Airbnb in 2017-18.

These platforms are part of the “sharing economy” and have opened up new avenues for tourism. Since its founding in 2008, Airbnb has enabled millions of “hosts” around the world to let out their spare space – whether this is an extra bedroom or an entire home.

In 2015, the UK government deregulated short-term rentals in London, allowing homeowners to share their home for up to 90 nights per year without planning permission. However, it is not just private homeowners who are taking advantage of this system.

Research has found that instead of offering their property as a longer-term rental, some landlords were moving their houses on to Airbnb where they can make higher profits. This raises concerns about the impact of short-term rental activity on housing availability and affordability in London.

In our new research at Edge Hill University, we looked at the growth of Airbnb activity in London to understand in greater depth how properties are being shared on the platform – and by whom. Using data provided by InsideAirbnb and author and researcher Tom Slee, we analysed the Airbnb platform for listings in London between 2014-19.

Our findings reveal worrying trends amid considerable growth in Airbnb activity across London. Since 2014, there has been a 571% increase in the number of entire home listings, with nearly 45,000 entire properties available to rent. There has also been substantial growth in what could be classed as “commercial” activity rather than occasional home sharing.

Not just spare rooms

One indicator of commercial rental activity is the availability of a property on the platform. If a property is being shared when the host is away, then the property would only be available for a limited number of nights per year. On the other hand, a home that is available for more than 90 nights per year, we argue, indicates that this is a commercial activity.

We found that since 2015 the number of entire home listings that were available for more than 90 nights had increased by 123% to just over 18,000 homes. We further found that 61% of these properties were offered by hosts with more than one property, and this activity had increased by 275% since 2015.

An Airbnb spokesperson told The Conversation: “This research uses a flawed methodology focused on calendar availability data gathered from third parties. In reality the typical entire home listing on Airbnb in London is let for just 35 nights a year and there are very few exceptions where a listing is let for 90 nights or more. Airbnb was the first platform to introduce a 90 night cap to voluntarily enforce rules in London and has for years led calls in partnership with City Hall for a short-term let register to be introduced.”

Another indicator of commercial rental activity is to examine the number of entire property listings provided by hosts with two or more entire property listings. We found that these listings had increased by 480% since 2015 to nearly 20,000 homes. We also found that only 12% of hosts had more than one property.

We were able to break the data down further by examining the impact on different local areas within London. We found that there is a concentration of entire property listings provided by hosts with two or more properties in a few London boroughs, specifically Westminster (23% of listings), Kensington and Chelsea (15% of listings) and Camden (10% of listings). Other researchers found similar results in other large cities including New York, Madrid and Berlin.

Renting and displacement

The activity we found in Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea and Camden is likely to lead to displacement for communities in these neighbourhoods. Researchers term this tourism gentrification, where tourists displace residents from their local communities through increases in rental prices and decreased housing availability, making it difficult for people to find an affordable home to rent in their local neighbourhood.

Our findings reveal that a significant portion of the Airbnb activity in London is not what could be seen as the authentic sharing of homes, where the asset is being underused (a spare bedroom, for example), but commercial activity. It is unlikely that local communities can access and realise the benefits of the sharing economy as intended.

Landlords are attracted to the short-term rental market because of what is termed a technological rent gap. Platforms such as Airbnb make it easier for landlords to access the short-term holiday rental market – where they are able to make higher profits by offering their property as a short-term rental instead of a home to rent for the long term.

Airbnb has taken action to limit this activity by enforcing the 90 night limit in London, by automatically stopping properties being booked for more than 90 nights without evidence of planning permission. But there is evidence that some landlords are bypassing the system by setting up new listings for the property or using multiple platforms to advertise the property. There is a need to limit landlords from using homes on these platforms for the long term, by using a local registration and licensing scheme.

Airbnb and similar platforms could be a force for good, by enabling people to access unique places, and by sharing excess capacity in existing homes. However, the platform enables landlords to make higher profits by choosing tourists over providing homes for the long term – contributing to the gentrification of neighbourhoods and displacing local communities through higher rents and property prices.

Governments across the UK are planning on introducing significant rental reforms, such as the Renters Reform bill in England. Further reforms could drive more landlords to use Airbnb over providing long-term housing. Care must be taken to ensure that further properties are not lost from the residential sector.

Tom Simcock, Research Fellow, Edge Hill University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

UK-based Yoruba nationalist, Adeyinka Grandson has been convicted on charges of terrorism, inciting genocide and conspiracy to commit terrorism.

The President of the Young Yorubas for Freedom (YYF) secessionist group was arrested in August 2019 by the Scotland Yard Counter Terrorism Command London and the Metropolitan Police, following an approval granted by Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London.

Adeyinka became popular on social media after issuing threats majorly targeted at Igbos living in South-West states.  He further called for the Yoruba race to secede from Nigeria, and also allegedly threatened the north with the use of chemical weapons if the South-West is attacked under any guise.

Upon being arrested on charges of “stirring racial discrimination” and “encouraging terrorism", his passport, two Google phones, one Apple MacBook laptop computer, one tablet, a hard drive and a draft copy of his new book were seized.

British television, Ben TV reported that Adeyinka was convicted on all charges which include terrorism, inciting genocide and conspiracy to commit terrorism.

Kris Gledhill, Auckland University of Technology

With most COVID-19 restrictions now lifted in England, the world is watching to see what this so-called “freedom day” will bring.

Some scepticism is warranted, given Britain’s approach throughout the pandemic has hardly been a success. By July 19, there had been 128,985 deaths from COVID-19, and the death rate per million of population was just under 1,900.

True, there are countries with worse rates, including Hungary, Italy and the Czech Republic in Europe. But countries that have taken a different approach have vastly better figures: for example, 35.8 deaths per million of population in Australia, and 5.39 in New Zealand.

No doubt Boris Johnson’s government took its emphatic 2019 election victory and relatively successful vaccination program as a mandate for opening up.

But the current situation doesn’t support such optimism. Infection rates are now the worst in Europe and the death rate is climbing. By contrast, Australia has much lower death and infection rates but state authorities have responded with lockdowns.

Furthermore, many scientists have condemned the opening-up policy. The authors of the John Snow Memorandum stress the risks to the 17 million people in the UK who have not been vaccinated, and state:

[This approach] provides fertile ground for the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants. This would place all at risk, including those already vaccinated, within the UK and globally.

Taking the UK to court

Is it enough to hope Boris de Pfeffel Johnson will not just dismiss these concerns as piffle? Perhaps there is an alternative — taking the UK to court. Specifically, to the international courts that deal with matters of human rights.

For countries in the Council of Europe, this would be the European Court of Human Rights. Globally, there is the option of the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations.

How would this work? A court claim requires what lawyers call a “cause of action” — in this case, a breach of human rights, including the right to life and the right not to be subject to inhuman and degrading treatment.

Read more: July 19 'Freedom Day': Boris Johnson's biggest gamble is trusting the public

In the main international human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), article 6 requires that the right to life, which belongs to everyone, must be protected. Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) says the same.

In 2019, the UN Human Rights Committee noted this right to life amounts to an “entitlement […] to be free from acts and omissions that are intended or may be expected to cause their unnatural or premature death”.

It also noted the obligation on states to take steps to counter life-threatening diseases.

A duty to protect

European Court of Human Rights case law establishes that the duty to protect life includes a requirement on states to take reasonable steps if they know (or ought to know) there is a real and immediate risk to life.

This has usually involved the criminal actions of dangerous people, but there is no reason it should not cover government policy that rests on an acceptance that people will die.

After all, the entire human rights framework was put in place to limit states from breaching rights.

Read more: No, we can’t treat COVID-19 like the flu. We have to consider the lasting health problems it causes

This duty to protect applies not just to deaths. Both the ICCPR and the ECHR have absolute prohibitions on inhuman and degrading treatment. For many people, the severity of COVID-19, including the consequences of long COVID, meet this standard.

If government policy can mitigate such consequences, human rights standards mandate that it should.

In short, this is not just a matter of the right to health. Because the UK will likely allow the virus to spread from its shores, the rest of the world is at risk and therefore has an interest here. So can other countries take action?

A political calculation

Human rights conventions are treaties — promises by states to each other as to how they will act. Article 33 of the ECHR is very clear: states can ask the European Court of Human Rights to adjudicate whether another state is breaching rights. There are many instances of this happening.

Importantly, the court can issue “interim measures” under its procedural rules to preserve the status quo while it hears a case.

Read more: The UK's speedy COVID-19 vaccine rollout: surprise success or planned perfection?

The UN Human Rights Committee may also consider state-to-state complaints under article 41 of the ICCPR if a state has agreed to this — and the UK has made the relevant declaration.

Of course, any decision by a state to take another to court is political. But this pandemic is not just a health issue, it is also a matter of life and death. Protecting life should be a political priority precisely because it is such a fundamental right.

Politicians willing to stand up for human rights should use the tools that exist to achieve that aim.

Kris Gledhill, Professor of Law, Auckland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The first time I encountered an intensive “chicken shed” up close I was taken aback by just how massive it was – the huge industrial-looking metal clad building was well over 100 metres long by 25 metres wide. And there wasn’t just one, there were seven of these colossal sheds, the sun glinting off their roofs and adjacent clusters of tall silos. A constant hum emanated from them and periodically a strange clattering sound, possibly of grain being sprayed automatically from a silo into a shed.

There was a large, immaculately clean concrete yard and an almost uncanny lack of human activity. Finally, overwhelmingly, was the all-pervading smell. The malty, almost sweetish odour became increasingly unpleasant as I stood to take in the scene, making me feel slightly sick.

The distinctive stink followed me as I continued down the footpath. I began to develop a headache. I felt jumpy despite being on a public right of way – should I be this close to what I knew was an intensive poultry unit? Were there biosecurity risks?

And when the path veered close to the building I began to actually hear the birds inside. That triggered other emotions. I knew that the chickens were on a life trajectory of a mere six weeks (eight weeks for “slow grow birds”) before they would be loaded onto lorries to be taken to the processing factory.

Later, several farmers showed me round their sheds. Inside one, I stood rather stunned at the sheer scale of the building stretching in front of me and the 45,000 chickens crowded into the space. They pecked at plastic feeders or the occasional small bale of hay providing “environmental enrichment”.

This is how 95% of the one billion chickens raised in the UK each year are grown: chicken is the country’s most popular meat and these massive sheds are why it’s so cheap.

The premises which produce much of the UK’s meat are relatively hidden from view. Not only do most people not want to think about how meat is raised, it is in the interests of the intensive livestock industry to keep a low profile. Many meat eaters understandably tend to avoid watching documentaries and reading about the horrors of factory farming. Out of sight, out of mind. The meat industry knows this too, and tries hard to keep the realities of the conditions that industrially farmed animals are kept in divorced from the product people buy in supermarkets.

Read more: Why aren't we more outraged about eating chicken?

But this article isn’t about animal welfare realities. It’s about how the poultry industry has managed to keep a low profile while undergoing a massive expansion to supply all the supermarkets and fast food chains. There has been an intensive poultry industry in the UK for over 60 years, but it has been upscaling in recent decades, becoming more like North America’s mega farms.

For the last four years, I have been investigating how intensive poultry units have been allowed to multiply across certain parts of the UK. I have discovered that the poultry industry has taken advantage of weak regulatory and planning regimes in order to expand what is a very profitable business. I have traced how local people have become increasingly angry about the myriad impacts they face from the intensive chicken sheds – and how they have mobilised to fight the industry’s expansion.

Chicken hub

I live in Ludlow, Shropshire, close to the Herefordshire border. These two counties are at the heart of the UK’s chicken industry. My attention was first drawn to the issue in 2014, when I began to notice frequent articles and angry letters in my local papers, the Hereford Times and the Shropshire Star. The headlines read things like: “Stench from broiler units is inescapable”; “Protesters mass to fight ‘terrible’ chicken farm”.

Campaigns against several planning applications for what are known in the business as intensive poultry units (IPUs) had been launched in the Shropshire Hills (an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) and scenic and tranquil parts of Herefordshire. A significant controversy had kicked off. Some planning applications had hundreds of letters submitted objecting to the proposals. I wanted to know what had prompted the levels of outrage in an area where there has been commercial chicken farming since the 1950s, and set about researching the issue for my PhD.

This article is part of Conversation Insights
The Insights team generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.

When I began to trace the pattern of planning applications across Herefordshire and Shropshire, trawling through the records for each county, it became clear that the industry had expanded steadily over the 1990s and 2000s, with more and more farms investing in poultry and IPUs becoming progressively bigger. Where the average broiler (meat chicken) shed held 25,000 birds in 1990 and 40,000 birds in the 2000s, the new applications were for sheds to hold 50,000-55,000 birds at a time. By 2010 there were at least 800 chicken sheds, for meat and also many for eggs, across the two counties, which I estimate to be around 20% of the UK total.

I found there had been a sudden surge in applications in the early 2010s, partly as a result of supermarkets wanting to source more chicken from the UK in the wake of the horsemeat scandal. In 2013-14 for example, the huge chicken processing plants in Hereford, run by multinational Cargill, took on a new contract with Tesco to provide an additional million chickens a week. This required a further 90 chicken sheds within an hour’s drive of the plants and many farmers were keen to become suppliers.

I started to interview as many people as I could: farmers, planners, local authority and environmental agency staff, councillors, objectors, campaigners and other local businesses; and began to understand why the controversy had erupted.

The pull of poultry

Going into poultry is an attractive proposition for farmers. Consistently the most profitable UK agricultural sector, poultry provides a steady income and is not dependent on subsidy, unlike most UK farming. The farmers I spoke to wanted the “certainty” that a contract with a poultry processor gave them. Several wanted to expand and create a job for a member of the next generation and to make the farm more resilient, particularly given the uncertainties over Brexit.

Expanding into poultry is a big investment; in the region of £2.5 million for a four shed broiler unit. But I was told farms can pay off their investment within 10-15 years and more quickly if they also installed renewable energy systems such as solar, biomass and anaerobic digestion (AD) units, all of which receive government subsidies.

But once the system is up and running, it doesn’t require much physical effort (at least compared to traditional farming methods). The vast majority of chicken farming in the UK has joined other forms of “precision farming” that uses smart technology within an integrated system owned and organised by a processing company.

Day-old chicks are delivered from the hatchery. The processor (such as Cargill) provides the feed and sends in “catching gangs” and lorries to pick up the birds after six weeks. The farmer never actually owns the birds but carries the risk if more than the normal 5% die before reaching the processing plant.

The farmer is able to monitor the shed temperature, humidity and check on feed, water and so on on their computer or phone. All it requires is for someone to walk through each shed daily picking up the dead and sick birds. This means the intensive chicken production provides only about 1.5 workers on each average farm of four to six sheds (although some of the operations have ten or 15 sheds). A poultry farmer told me that these larger businesses can make in the region of £1 million profit a year.

The justifications for IPUs I heard at planning committee meetings mainly revolved around the need for affordable, healthy protein to feed the nation. The UK is about 75% self-sufficient in poultry (according to figures published by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board in 2018, although little recent data has been made available). Emphasis was placed on how raising chicken in the UK is better in terms of food miles and animal welfare as the UK has higher welfare regulations than in many parts of the world.

Farmers applying for planning permission for new units stressed the supply chain and economic benefits as well as the jobs in the processing factory. They accused objectors of being incomers to the area; “NIMBYs” or “down-from-Londoners” who didn’t understand the realities of modern farming and who had unrealistic, idyllic ideas of what rural life is like.

They denied the IPUs would cause any environmental problems, saying that they had to meet environmental permit standards and that the Environment Agency would address any inadvertent pollution. They denied that IPUs smell and ridiculed those who complain about agricultural smells or noises in rural areas.

It is true that these intensive chicken units vary considerably. There is a huge difference between the larger sites, some owned directly by the processing company, where there may be ten or more sheds and very little other farming activities, and at the other extreme small farms that have diversified into free range eggs because their beef or sheep enterprise has struggled to make a profit. But both types can be controversial.

(Most UK eggs are also produced in intensive units; standard free-range units house 16,000 or 32,000 hens in systems where the birds have theoretical access to the outdoors, while in contrast conventional systems may house millions of hens).

The surge in applications to supply Cargill in 2014 included some in particularly scenic and biodiverse environments. This created a PR disaster. Local people who had always been largely tolerant of agricultural activities felt the expansion of the poultry industry had become “something other”, as one officer described. Resistance crystallised and a range of local people began to mobilise to fight the proliferation of further poultry units.

The other side of the story

So were these objectors really just retired NIMBYs and ignorant townies?

I interviewed numerous people who objected to the IPU proposals and followed one group of campaigners that formed in a small, historic village not far from my home. The farming family who own much of the land around the village was proposing to build a new poultry site, close to residents’ houses. I attended the campaign group’s meetings in the back room of the village pub.

I listened to them discussing what was meant by the scientific terminology used in the various odour, noise, ecology and visual impact assessments. They became increasingly expert in understanding the planning process and the technical information used. I heard their frustrated complaints about the unfairness of the process, the profits made by the interconnected farming families and the influence such landowners had on the parish council and local planning committee.

There was a sense of injustice that one business could inflict such change on the local area and community. Unlike with some invasive developments such as wind turbines, electricity pylons or housing developments, there are no financial payback mechanisms which would fund community projects or facilities in recompense. I regularly heard objectors mention the fact that farmers do not even pay business rates on their poultry operations as they are deemed agricultural developments.

The campaign group reached out to local experts to learn more about the impacts. They learned how the ammonia gas from the chicken faeces is pumped out of sheds into the air and damages local habitats and ancient woodland, and how excess manure spreading has been found to cause illegal levels of pollution in local rivers. I joined the group on a visit to a nearby Site of Special Scientific Interest to see breathtaking swards of orchids and other rare plants in stunning wildflower meadows – also vulnerable to cumulative ammonia emissions.

This group was typical of the objectors I met: a mix of some people who had moved to the area to work or retire, alongside long-time residents. Some were older but there were many middle-aged people, some professionals who developed the expertise in planning processes but also many others who supplied local knowledge, contacts and who simply cared about what was changing in their local countryside and how it impacted on their families and friends.

I also met several farmers who objected to intensive poultry. One told a friend of mine, while contemplating his neighbour’s new IPU, “That’s not farming.” Others voiced concerns and misgivings to me, but few felt able to disrupt relations within the farming community and go on the record against other farmers.

While each planning application was different, there were a number of concerns consistently voiced by objectors. These were the foul smell, the visual impact of the IPU on the landscape, noise from the units and from the associated HGV traffic, road safety concerns, water pollution affecting local rivers, biodiversity loss from ammonia and that the proliferating industrial buildings would damage the local tourism industry, which was economically much more valuable to the economy of the area than agriculture.

One issue which tended to creep up on objectors as they researched the impacts of IPUs was the uncertainty over health impacts – the ammonia and dangerous particulates in the air, which can cause serious respiratory problems, the potential for spread of livestock-related infections, whether antimicrobial resistance, of which intensive animal farms are a major source, could linger in the local environment and the existential threat of a bird flu outbreak which might cross the species barrier. This particular concern has hardly lessened in the last year.

And yes, people were also concerned about whether a large IPU built near their house might affect the value of their property or deter future business customers. Others were vociferous about animal welfare issues or the evils of importing soya from South America for the bird feed. But overall I found that most people had multiple concerns – for themselves, their family, their health and their finances but also for the community, other people, local businesses, plus concerns about farming systems, planning procedures, democracy and justice.

Increasing awareness

Clearly there are extremely polarised values and concerns involved in these arguments. Planning officers and committees have difficult decisions to make, particularly as there are almost no planning policies that govern where intensive livestock operations can be sited. There is a policy void. The repercussions of allowing intensive poultry units to proliferate have been ignored in favour of facilitating the expansion of agribusiness.

Local plans for both counties have almost no reference to poultry businesses despite the numbers of sheds now nearing 1,150 and the number of birds in the counties at any one time approaching 38 million in my estimate. I found that the local authorities had neglected (intentionally or not) to develop supplementary planning guidance which would have clarified the situation for everyone.

Decisions were therefore made largely with reference to vague objectives in national planning policy such as “sustainable development” and boosting rural economies, and over 95% of applications between 2000 and 2020 were given permission. I found that the planning committees have been dominated by local politicians who are embedded in local agricultural networks and tend to accept the farming lobby’s arguments or be cowed by the dominance of major economic actors such as Cargill.

The application the group I followed were fighting, like most others, was approved. But the campaigners did not give up. There is no third party right of appeal in the UK so they could not challenge the decision directly, but they applied for, and secured, a judicial review of the decision-making process. At this point the county council ceded the case, accepting that they had made errors when assessing some of the likely impacts of the IPU. This has happened in several cases now. Local communities have lost trust in the planning system and local authorities’ ability to make sound decisions.

Ultimately, Cargill (now a joint venture renamed Avara) succeeded in having its 90 additional sheds built, although it took much longer than anticipated and there were many battles along the way. In the process, local awareness about the range of cumulative negative impacts has been raised. In Herefordshire, the increased nutrient pollution and algal blooms in the rivers Wye and Lugg has finally woken up the council to the links with vastly increased amounts of poultry manure being spread on agricultural land.

In Shropshire, concerns over ammonia pollution of protected habitats now mean recent applications for IPUs must include technical fixes, such as expensive ammonia scrubbers. There is a better understanding of how local people, communities, environments and tax payers are paying the true costs of the externalities from the poultry industry, which avoids picking up the bill.

The situation also raises broader questions such as whether intensive livestock operations should be treated in planning law as agriculture or industry. The scale, intensity and impacts have changed dramatically since the last relevant planning act in 1990. One councillor told me: “If these sheds were producing spring coils they wouldn’t be allowed. They’d be encouraged to go to enterprise zones and business parks, but because this is, in policy terms, deemed to be agriculture, that’s a real problem.”

What this all brings home is the wildly unnatural price of chicken in the UK. Why can you buy a whole chicken at Tesco for under £3? The actual, but largely hidden, costs associated with the production of cheap chicken are not passed on to consumers. Neither are they paid by the owners of multinational meat processing conglomerates, Tesco shareholders or poultry farmers.

The costs are being paid by local communities and environments in the damage to the landscape, air and water pollution and quality of life. They are also being paid by the taxpayer, in terms of health costs or pollution clean-up costs, or renewable energy subsidy costs.

Chicken is viewed as a healthy and convenient source of protein, but there are other more sustainable, cheaper and healthier protein options which could also be grown in the UK. These include peas, beans, nuts and lentils, some of which have the advantage of fixing nitrogen in the soil rather than increasing nutrients in the environment. People could substitute such plant-based protein for chicken in many meals.

So don’t wince when you see the price of chickens raised in better conditions – there are many reasons it’s more expensive and it’s not just the better environment the animals experience. You’ll be paying farmers who resist the dominance of multinational agri-industry and who are inflicting less harm on rural communities and localities.

For you: more from our Insights series:

• How we discovered a hidden world of fungi inside the world’s biggest seed bank

• Rewilding: rare birds return when livestock grazing has stopped

• For a sustainable future, we need to reconnect with what we’re eating – and each other

To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. Subscribe to our newsletter.

Alison Caffyn, Research Affiliate, Geography and Planning, Cardiff University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.