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 –
