Major Reform of the Planning Use Class System
Tuesday 6 October 2020
As of the 1st September 2020, changes to the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 came in to effect in England. These changes will allow significantly greater flexibility to move between certain use classes in the hope of supporting the recovery of our high streets and towns.
A new use class has been created called Class E ‘Commercial Business and Service’ which will replace the old Classes A1, A2, A3, B1, D1 and D2. This new class will cover a wide range of uses including:
- Retail, financial and professional services, cafés and restaurants;
- Offices, research and development and light industrial;
- Clinics, health centres and nurseries;
- Indoor sport and recreation.
There have been some exclusions from Class E such as Class A4 (drinking establishments) and Class A5 (hot food takeaway) now falling within Sui Generis.
In addition to this, two new use classes have been created called Class F.1 (applies to learning and non-residential institutions) and Class F.2 (applies to local community uses).
Some uses such as Industrial (Class B2), storage and distribution (Class B8) and dwelling houses (Class C3) will remain unchanged.
Please click here to see a chart of the Use Class changes.
Sebastian Martin, Director, commented, “although still fairly new, these changes have already facilitated a number of transactions and will definitely go a long way to helping secure the long term future of some buildings. In our experience securing a change of use previously would have taken months to obtain, cost a lot of money and still there was no certainly for either landlord or tenant. Ultimately, this would have put off a lot of interested parties. Going forward we will be able to market certain properties to wider pool of applicants, which give us a better of securing a occupiers”.
