In April 2016 the Government issued regulations which will grant a new permitted development right to allow light industrial (Class B1c) uses to be converted to residential (Class C3) without planning permission. The relevant statutory provisions are set out in Schedule 2, Part 3, Class PA of the General Permitted Development Order (GPDO).
This means that come October 2017, planning permission will no longer be required for a change of use of a light industrial unit to residential. Planning permission will be replaced with a system of prior approval, which will allow Councils to consider a narrower range of issues in deciding whether or not to grant prior approval permission.
The prior approval mechanisms are a temporary provision and will end on 1st October 2020.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) have been quick off the mark in acting to stop these provisions taking effect and have articulated their intention to issue a none immediate Article 4 Direction to remove these permitted development rights. The Council is currently consulting on the Article 4 Direction. The consultation closes on the 4th November 2016. The Article 4 Direction (if it remains unchallenged) would come into effect on 25th September 2017.
In the councils consultation notice, the Borough explain their reasons for seeking to issue the Article 4 Direction, these principally being to do with the protection of employment space and the effect on the London economy.
However, in reading council consultation statements I am always really interested in the specific language used as it gives an insight into the thought of the author and given the Royal Boroughs status as a leader on these matters is it always interesting to see if their policies and reasoning are copied by other councils.
The main linguistic point which struck me was the council’s justification for protecting car workshops describing them as “akin to a social and community use”. The words ‘social and community use’ are famous in planning parlance for describing those uses which are essential public services and the RBKC description seems at odd with this well established nomenclature as it would give Kwik-Fit the same descriptive planning status as a doctors surgery or primary school.
I don’t think it is reasonable to describe a place where you go to get new tyres for your Range Rover as having the same ‘social and community’ status as the fundamentally essential public services such as education and healthcare. Similarly, I do not think it is reasonable to place a wide ranging Article 4 Direction removing permitted development rights en-masse without proper justification, especially when the statutory provision within the GPDO give councils plenty of statutory ammunition to refuse such prior approval applications:
where the authority considers the building to which the development relates is within an area that is important for providing industrial services or storage or distribution services or a mix of those services (which includes, where the development relates to part of a building, services provided from any other part of the building), whether the introduction of, or an increase in, a residential use of premises in the area would have an adverse impact on the sustainability of the provision of those services
Why didn’t the Council just be frank and say “because residential values in the Borough are so high we need to act quickly and protect everything or it will all become expensive flats”
There needs to be more honesty in the use of language or other councils and indeed the public are likely to be mis-led about the real reasons for applying a policy approach, or worst still, seek to copy an idea for the wrong reasons.