No Planning For Change Of Use?

We have all seen a lot of publicity on the government's proposals to speed up and simplify the system for getting planning permission to kick start the economy. From 30 May 2013 various changes of use can be made without the need for a formal planning consent. How will this work in practice? Will the red tape and delays really be cut down? Are there still going to be issues that will make these developments difficult? I have been speaking to our planning expert Julia Berry. From her answers you can see that it is not all going to be entirely straight forward!

Can all offices be converted to residential or does the type or size of office make a difference?

In fact, it is only offices that were within use class B1(A) that can be converted to C3 residential. B1(A) means offices not generally used by visiting members of the public and the residential use they can be changed to is not any kind of institutional residential use - like student housing or nursing homes - but ordinary residential use. This means that buildings such as a high street estate agents office will not therefore be ripe for conversion under the new permitted development rights.

However there is no maximum to the size of any office building under the new permitted development rights but the right to make the change of use will only apply for three years (on the current drafting).

Since most conversions from office to residential will not be possible without external works (that normally require planning permission), do permitted development rights extend to works?

No. The rights only cover change of use, so there will still be requirements to obtain planning permission for any operational development to convert an office building into a residential building. This is probably the most limiting factor in the benefit the new rules bring.

In addition, where an existing planning consent or a section 106 planning agreement impose use restrictions, then planning consent will be needed for the change of use to residential.

Do the permitted development rights apply across the whole country or are they something which get adopted by each local authority?

A large number of local authorities applied to be exempted from the new regulations but in the end only 17 exemptions were granted and the majority of those were in inner London (the Central Activities Zone and Tech City including parts of Westminster, the City and the whole of Kensington and Chelsea). Outside London there are...