Understanding planning
The Town & Country Planning Acts controls ‘development’ and this includes not just construction or building works, but also changes of the ‘use’ to which particular premises can be put. Planning permission is often required before a material change from one use to another is allowed. However, not every change of use requires planning permission.
Some similar uses are lumped together into ‘classes’ by the Town & Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987, and changes from one use to another within the same class do not require planning permission. The point of this system is to stop, say, a heavy industry starting up in a shopping area, but to allow one type of shop to change to another.
Use classes in full
There are four broad groups of use classes: (A) high street or shopping area uses; (B) other business and industrial uses; (C) residential uses; and (D) social and community uses of a non-residential kind.
A1 Shops
Shops, sandwich bars, retail warehouses, hairdressers, undertakers, travel and ticket agents, post offices, dry cleaners (for receiving clothes, not cleaning on the premises), internet cafes, pet shops, cat-meat shops, tripe shops, showrooms, domestic hire shops, funeral directors.
Planning permission is required for a change to a use outside this class.
A2 Financial and Professional Services
Banks, Building Societies, estate and employment agencies, professional and financial services, betting offices.
Change of use is permitted to A1 for premises with a ground floor display window.
A3 Food and Drink
Restaurants, snack bars, cafes.
Change of use is permitted to A1 or A2
A4 Drinking establishments
Public houses, wine bars and other drinking establishments
Change of use is permitted to A1, A2 or A3
A5 Hot food takeaways
Change of use is permitted to A1, A2 or A3
Shop uses which are 'Sui Generis'.
Shops selling and/or displaying motor vehicles, launderettes, taxi or vehicle hire businesses, amusement centres, petrol filling stations, scrap yards, retail warehouse, clubs.
Planning permission is required for a change to another use.
B1 Business
Offices not within A2, research and development, studios, laboratories, high tech, light industry Change of use is permitted to B8 (for premises of no more than 235m2)
B2 General Industrial
General Industrial
Change of use is permitted to B1 or B8 (for premises of no more than 235m2)
B8 Storage or Distribution
Wholesale warehouse, distribution centres and repositories
Change of use is permitted to B1 (for premises of no more than 235m2)
C1 Hotels
Hotels, boarding and guest houses
Planning permission required for a change to a use outside this class.
C2 Residential Institutions
Residential schools and colleges, hospitals and convalescent/nursing homes
Planning permission required for a change to a use outside this class.
C3 Dwelling Houses
Dwellings
Planning permission required for a change to a use outside this class.
Sui Generis: Hostel. Planning permission required for a change to another use.
D1 Non-resident institutions
Places of worship, church halls, clinics, health centres, creches, day nurseries, consulting rooms, museums, public halls, libraries, art galleries, exhibition halls, non- residential education and training centres.
Planning permission required for a change to a use outside this class.
D2 Assembly and leisure
Cinemas, concert halls, dance, sports halls, swimming baths, skating rinks, gymnasiums, other indoor and outdoor sports and leisure uses, bingo halls, casinos
Planning permission required for a change to a use outside this class.
Sui Generis: Theatres, nightclubs. Planning permission required for a change to another use.
Use classes
Which class a use is in
In many cases it’s straightforward: a newsagent’s shop is A1, a bank is A2. But there are cases where the lines are blurred: a sandwich bar with tables, a pub with a restaurant. The answer depends on establishing the primary use. Do customers come principally to drink or to eat? How much floor area is devoted to each use? If the primary use is genuinely a mixture of uses not all in the same class the use will be sui generis (see below).
Sui generis.
If a particular use is not within any class, or straddles classes, it is said to be 'sui generis' (Latin for ‘of its own kind’) and then it always needs permission for a change of use.
Sub-division
If a building used for purposes falling within a particular use class were to be sub-divided, without physical works amounting to development, and each of the units was to be used for purposes which also fell within the same class, planning permission is unlikely to be required, even though any associated intensification might be a material change of use.
Intensification
On the other hand, planning permission will be required if subdivision of a building used for a purpose not within any use class was accompanied by intensification amounting to a material change of use. Planning permission will also be required if subdivision of a building were to result in the primary use of any resulting part not continuing within the same use class as the use to which the whole building was put before the subdivision.
Creating flats
This does not apply to dwellings: converting houses to flats always requires permission for change of use.