Sometimes, and it depends on the lease, not on the council or on planning law. A leasehold flat is governed by a private contract between you and the freeholder, and that contract can restrict or ban short lets regardless of what planning rules or Airbnb allow. Read the lease before you read anything else on this subject.
Why the lease comes first
Most guidance on short-letting in London starts with the 90-night rule, which is a planning matter and applies to the property regardless of who owns it. But a huge number of London flats never get near that limit as a live issue, because the lease stops them before planning does.
A lease is a contract you agreed to when you bought the flat. It sets out what you can and cannot do with the property, and those terms bind you whether or not you remember reading them. Planning law is public and enforced by the council. A lease is private and enforced by the freeholder, or by a managing agent acting for them. They are entirely separate systems, and passing one tells you nothing about the other.
What leases typically say
There is no standard leasehold clause on this because leases are drafted individually, sometimes decades apart, by different solicitors for different freeholders. But a few patterns turn up repeatedly in London flats.
A residential use clause. Most leases require the flat to be used as a private residence, sometimes "by the lessee or their family" specifically. Short-letting to a stream of paying guests can fall foul of this even where the lease never mentions Airbnb by name, because the clause was written before short lets existed and is being tested against something it was never drafted for.
A clause against "trade or business". Many leases prohibit carrying on a trade or business from the flat. Whether nightly lettings count as a business use is genuinely contested in some leases and has been the subject of actual disputes between leaseholders and freeholders. Where the wording is broad, freeholders often argue it catches short lets even if the leaseholder disagrees.
An alienation clause requiring consent to sub-let. Many leases allow sub-letting but only with the freeholder's prior written consent, sometimes for lets over a minimum length, sometimes for any letting at all. A short let is a form of sub-letting, and if consent is required and you never asked for it, you are in breach the moment a paying guest checks in, however good the reason felt at the time.
Silence. Some older leases say nothing that anticipates a nightly letting market at all. Silence is not permission. If the lease is genuinely ambiguous, that ambiguity gets resolved by the freeholder's interpretation and, if it comes to it, by a court or tribunal, not by whichever reading suits you.
Why the freeholder matters more than the council
Planning enforcement is slow, complaint-driven, and varies enormously between boroughs. A freeholder does not need any of that. Breach of a lease is a contractual matter, and depending on the lease's terms, a freeholder who establishes a breach can in principle pursue forfeiture of the lease itself, which is a far more serious outcome than a planning enforcement notice. In practice forfeiture for this reason is rare and courts are generally reluctant to allow it for a first or minor breach, but the freeholder does not need to go that far to make your life difficult. A formal notice, a demand that lettings stop immediately, or a costs claim for dealing with the breach are all far quicker to arrive than anything from a planning department.
Freeholders also hear about short lets faster than councils do, because the people most likely to notice and complain, other leaseholders in the same building, report to the managing agent or freeholder directly rather than to the local authority. A noise complaint from the flat below often reaches your freeholder within days. It can take a council months to act on the same thing, if it ever does.
What to actually check before listing
Get the lease out, or ask your solicitor for the version used at purchase, and look specifically for the words "sub-let", "assign", "trade or business", and any minimum letting period mentioned anywhere. If the lease requires consent to sub-let, or is silent on short lets specifically, write to the freeholder or managing agent and ask directly, in terms specific enough that the answer is unambiguous: does the lease permit letting the flat on a nightly or short-term basis, and if not, is consent available and on what terms.
Some freeholders will say no outright. Some will consent subject to conditions, sometimes with a fee attached. Some managing agents have a formal policy on this already because enough leaseholders in the building have asked. Whatever the answer, get it in writing before you list, not after a complaint arrives.
This sits alongside, not instead of, the other checks that matter for a London short let: whether the mortgage permits it, whether the flat needs to stay under the 90-night planning limit, and whether the building's own house rules say anything further. A lease that permits short lets does not override the 90-night rule, and a mortgage that allows it does not override the lease. All three have to clear before the flat is genuinely free to list.
If you already know your lease allows it, or you want help working out whether it does, send us the postcode and the lease terms and we will tell you honestly what you are working with.
This is general information about how leasehold restrictions typically work, not legal advice. Lease wording varies significantly between buildings and even between flats in the same building. Ask a solicitor to review your specific lease before listing a leasehold flat short-term.