- The key test
- Whether the change is material, and whether it crosses a use class boundary
- Often not needed
- Changes within Class E, and several changes permitted by the GPDO
- Decision period
- 8 weeks from validation
- Our fee
- Fixed, quoted on the building and the use
- Common alternative
- Prior approval, which is faster and assessed on narrower grounds
Start with the Use Classes Order
Planning permission is needed for a material change in the use of land or buildings. The Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order groups uses together, and moving within a class is generally not development at all.
- Class E is the big one. Shops, most professional services, restaurants and cafes, indoor sport and gyms, medical uses, creches, offices, research and light industry all sit inside Class E. Moving between them does not need planning permission.
- Class C3 is dwellinghouses. Class C4 is small houses in multiple occupation for three to six people. Sui generis covers uses in a class of their own, including large HMOs, pubs and drinking establishments, hot food takeaways, betting shops and cinemas.
- Class F covers local community and learning uses, including shops of under 280 square metres selling essential goods where there is no other such shop within 1,000 metres.
So an office becoming a gym is usually no application at all. A pub becoming a shop is a change from sui generis into Class E and needs permission. A three bedroom house becoming a six person HMO may be permitted development, unless an Article 4 direction is in force, which in many university and seaside towns it is.
Article 4 directions withdraw permitted development rights in a defined area. They are used heavily for HMOs, and increasingly for shops in secondary frontages. Two identical houses a street apart can have entirely different answers. This is the first thing we check and the thing most often missed.
When permission is needed, what decides it
Change of use applications are rarely about appearance. They turn on impact and on policy protection of the existing use.
- Loss of the existing use. Many plans protect employment land, village shops, pubs and community facilities. Expect to have to show the existing use is no longer viable, usually with a marketing exercise over a defined period at a realistic rent.
- Amenity. Noise, hours of operation, odour and extraction for food uses, comings and goings late at night.
- Highways and parking. Trip generation for the new use compared with the old, and whether parking standards are met.
- Living conditions. Where the new use is residential, whether future occupiers get adequate light, outlook, space and outdoor amenity. This is where a lot of commercial to residential conversions fail.
- Concentration. For HMOs and takeaways especially, many Councils apply a threshold on the proportion of properties within a radius.
The prior approval shortcut
Several changes of use are permitted by the General Permitted Development Order subject to prior approval, which is a much narrower and faster process. Commercial, business and service premises to dwellinghouses under Class MA is the most used. Agricultural buildings to dwellings under Class Q is the most argued about. If your change qualifies, it is almost always the better route. See prior approval.
What we do
- Establish the lawful existing use, which is not always the use currently happening
- Check Article 4 directions, conditions on earlier permissions and any restrictive planning history
- Tell you if you do not need permission, and whether a certificate is worth having anyway
- Advise whether prior approval, full permission, or both in parallel is the right route
- Prepare the planning statement, including the marketing or viability case where the plan requires one
- Submit, manage the case and negotiate conditions on hours, noise and extraction