Following closely on the heels of changes and additions to permitted development rights (see our separate web article), on 21st July a new piece of legislation was introduced which radically alters the structure of Use Classes in England. The Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2020 will give new flexibility for buildings to switch between a range of ‘town centre uses’ or to provide a number of these uses, under a new Class E – Commercial, Business and Service. This new class incorporates:
- Shops (formerly Class A1)
- Professional and financial services (formerly Class A2)
- Restaurants and cafes (formerly Class A3)
- Offices, R&D and light industrial (formerly Class B1)
- Indoor, sport recreation and fitness, medical and health services, creches, nurseries and day centres (formerly within Classes D1 and D2)
A new Local Community and Learning category is also created. Within this Class F.1 – Learning and Non-Residential Institutions includes education, display of art, museums, libraries, public and exhibition halls, places of worship and religious instruction and law courts. Class F.2 (Local Community) covers shops selling mostly essential goods, including food (provided that the premises are not above 280m2 and there is no other such facility within 1000m), community halls and meeting places, areas for outdoor sport and recreation (excluding motorised vehicles and firearms) and outdoor swimming pools and skating rinks.
Pubs, bars, takeaways, cinemas, concert, dance and bingo halls and live music venues all become sui generis (ie. in a class of their own).
The changes come into effect on 1st September 2020.
The new Commercial, Business and Service Class (E) recognises the pressure on town centres and the need for them to diversify. One aspect of this diversification must be an enhanced role for town centres as places of work, providing space for services, research and development, creating and making and Class E facilitates this. We may well also see more shops changing to restaurants, cafes, gyms, offices, health centres and indoor sports facilities. However, there may also be unintended consequences because Class E applies equally to out of town locations as it does to town centres. Given the challenges facing the retail sector, the view might be taken that the market is unlikely to have an appetite for retail growth through conversion of, say, an out of town business park, to retail. However, the squeeze on retailing might lead to moves to consolidate, and given the impact of the pandemic, more spacious out of town locations with good car access and parking could be tempting to some operators and investors. Such an outcome would be unfortunate, running counter to the principle of sustainable development and the need to support town and city centres as focal points for local communities.
The Local Community and Learning category creates the potential for planning authorities to develop policies to better safeguard such facilities. However, it may throw up some interesting situations. For example, where two shops selling essential goods are within 1000m of one another, they would fall within Class E, but if one were to close, the other would then find itself within Class F2.
In respect of permitted development rights, there is a ‘material period’ from 1st September 2020 to 31st July 2021 whereby the new use class system does not apply to permitted development rights. Old use classes (such as A1, A2, A3 etc) will still apply to Permitted Development until 31st July 2021. This means that developments requiring ‘prior approval’ under the old legislation will continue to do so until that date, using the use classes as they were prior to the new changes. New, revised permitted development rights will be introduced from 31st July 2021.
The changes to the Use Classes Order introduce welcome flexibility and offer the potential to support town centres to diversify and re-define their roles, albeit with the risk of unintended consequences set out above. However, given the challenges arising from long-run trends in growth of online retailing, out of town competition and a shift to spending on experiences rather than goods, with the added impacts brought by the Covid 19 pandemic, there remains the need for centres to develop strategies on how they can thrive over the long term, through collaboration between the main stakeholders.
If you would like to find out more about our experience and approach to town and city centre regeneration, or would like more information on recent Government changes to the planning system, please feel free to get in touch with our Planning and Regeneration Team.
Look out for our thoughts soon on the August 2020 White Paper – Planning for the Future.
- Written by Mel Clinton and Leigh Dennis.