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Is Brokenshire planning to end office-to-residential conversions?

Secretary of State yesterday committed to a broader review of this controversial type of Permitted Development conversion.

Nigel Lewis

permitted development offices

England’s more relaxed Permitted Development (PD) rules brought in six years ago to great fanfare as a key housing policy are likely to be radically overhauled, it has been announced.

Looser PD rules were trialled in 2013 and then made permanent in 2015 after being heralded as a ‘great success’ prompting at least 4,000 office-to-residential conversions to be given the green light.

But the more relaxed rules have come under attack for allowing low quality construction, ‘social cleansing’ and tiny ‘micro’ apartments.The government has now committed to broaden its review of the PD rules announced during the last budget statement by Philip Hammond.

The policy came under direct attack recently from both architects and surveyors including RICS.

Its report into PD said that the quality of schemes varied enormously and that some were ‘extremely poor quality housing’ that offered people homes much smaller than national minimum standards without community facilities and many were built in the middle of industrial estates.

MP Robert Halfon (left) has been campaigning to have the PD rules changed and yesterday asked the Secretary of State for Housing James Brokenshire to broaden his review.

In response Brokenshire promised to do this, including a commitment to ensure that future office to residential developments were built with adequate access to local services for their residents.

“I am content to look more broadly at where the burden lies with some of these transfers, because it is important that we get this right,” he said.

 

 

 

 

April 10, 2019

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