Commercial property turn into residential with no planning permission needed.

Pennywise

You don't need planning permission to turn a takeaway, pub or restaurant into a "professional" office, i.e. from A3/4/5 to A1. I once converted a Pizza takeaway on the High Street into my office for an accountancy practice - no pp needed.

As for shops, you may find that a lot of older properties on the main streets were originally built as dwellings or industrial, and then turned into shops as the town centres grew and retail took over. From my very limited experience of planning, I believe that proposals to convert something back to it's original use are a lot easier to obtain PP for. Also, it may well be that planning permission was never obtained for change of use to retail in the first place, so the official records would still show it as being dwelling or industrial - even better!

MrEnglish

lynzpower wrote: »

Getting the PP isnt hard, I guess its time consuming and relitavly expensive, so it just makes it cheaper for the developers not to have to change use

I always said this getting pp isnt that hard, it does take some time and effort and cost. You may get refused to start with so you have to make some changes to comply with red tape but you can get it if you want to put the time in.

But some on here talk as if its like climbing a mountain.

Any way after the budget it will be far easier.




Any other thoughts on my idea of changing status of any buildings that do not come under the new rules into something that does?

For instance changing status of a shop into an office? Then you could sell it with the possibility of resi in the future.

Niksan

That's easily solved as my local (20 yards away) was, about 7 years ago, a lovely pub, not commercially viable anymore, but was listed, someone wanted to build dwelling houses there, but couldn't as the pub was listed. One fire later, dwelling houses now exist in its spot.

Cleaver wrote: »

And apparently pubs aren't included either. That seems really odd to me:

• We have more pubs than we need as we've changed our culture,
• Loads of pubs are therefore closing down,
• A lot of the old pubs are amazing old buildings that would make great flats,
• Old pubs tend to be on the corners of streets, or slap bang in the middle of a residential area.

I'd much prefer to live in a decent pub conversion rather than an old office block.

vivatifosi

lynzpower wrote: »

Getting the PP isnt hard, I guess its time consuming and relitavly expensive, so it just makes it cheaper for the developers not to have to change use

This is the crux of my point. If the developer doesn't have to bear this cost, then the government could potentially sell for more, particularly as there will be no risk of not getting permission. In addition, there will not be the same administrative cost at local council - a win/win as far as the government would be concerned.

What I would personally like to see is some of these being converted to social housing at low cost as the buildings belong to the government anyway, but I'm not convinced we'll see this on any large scale.

I also think that the scale of sell-off of government estate will be much greater than previous so with more of such properties coming to the market, the switch to no pp may help them get converted more quickly.

MrEnglish

Pennywise wrote: »

You don't need planning permission to turn a takeaway, pub or restaurant into a "professional" office, i.e. from A3/4/5 to A1. I once converted a Pizza takeaway on the High Street into my office for an accountancy practice - no pp needed.

As for shops, you may find that a lot of older properties on the main streets were originally built as dwellings or industrial, and then turned into shops as the town centres grew and retail took over. From my very limited experience of planning, I believe that proposals to convert something back to it's original use are a lot easier to obtain PP for. Also, it may well be that planning permission was never obtained for change of use to retail in the first place, so the official records would still show it as being dwelling or industrial - even better!

So to snap up some of these cheap shops that have been empty for ages would be very prudent. If you could make them offices for a bit, then down the line make into bedsits. Even with the reduced housing benefit amount the yield would be excellent.

Pennywise

MrEnglish wrote: »

So to snap up some of these cheap shops that have been empty for ages would be very prudent. If you could make them offices for a bit, then down the line make into bedsits. Even with the reduced housing benefit amount the yield would be excellent.

Except that I don't think it's been particularly hard to get PP for conversions from shop/business to residential anyway if the property exterior isn't going to be substantially changed. If it's just a matter of converting the shop front, i.e. take away big window/door and replace with smaller in-keeping window/door, then I'd say PP would have been a mere formality anyway as I can't imagine any complaints from neighbours etc. Let's face it, there're loads of the "corner shops" with the owner's flat above that have been converted to dwelling - all we're now looking at is the same happening on the High Street and most older properties would have been originally built to have living accommodation above, so it's only really a few cosmetic changes on the ground floor.

I think the bigger challenge will be building regulations, especially if you're thinking of multiple occupancy, i.e. fire precautions such as emergency exits, fire doors, alarms etc., maybe also some official objections as regards resident's parking spaces.

MrEnglish

But this change will make it even easier and we will see even more shops turned into flats. As has been said a shop is very cheap to buy compared with a flat. I have seen commercial properties go at auction very cheap but now they will prob all be made into flats.

novazombie

Pennywise wrote: »

Except that I don't think it's been particularly hard to get PP for conversions from shop/business to residential anyway if the property exterior isn't going to be substantially changed. If it's just a matter of converting the shop front, i.e. take away big window/door and replace with smaller in-keeping window/door, then I'd say PP would have been a mere formality anyway as I can't imagine any complaints from neighbours etc. Let's face it, there're loads of the "corner shops" with the owner's flat above that have been converted to dwelling - all we're now looking at is the same happening on the High Street and most older properties would have been originally built to have living accommodation above, so it's only really a few cosmetic changes on the ground floor.

I think the bigger challenge will be building regulations, especially if you're thinking of multiple occupancy, i.e. fire precautions such as emergency exits, fire doors, alarms etc., maybe also some official objections as regards resident's parking spaces.

So why are they saying another quarter of a mil residential properties being added to the market with this change?

It has to be easier and more will get turned into flats.

Running_Horse

Cleaver wrote: »

Indeed. The main issue for Liverpool, unfortunately, is that it's a city which is far too big for the amount of people who live there. In the early part of the twentieth century when Liverpool was a very rich and important city I'm sure they had nearly a million people living there and all the buildings, houses and infrastructure to match. They had so much money they could afford to build and build and build.

Today the city only has around 400,000 people and therefore you have lots of empty residential buildings as the city simply doesn't 'need' the amount of people living there that it used to need. Sad really, but the shipping industry is never going to be what it was. I guess you could blame the Manchester Ship Canal and the invention of trains, planes and automobiles.

Interesting the difference between here and America, where cities are allowed to expand and contract at their own natural rate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit#Demographics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo,_New_York#Demographics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo,_Illinois
While towns and cities here get supported by the state:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/business/global/18welfare.html

lynzpower

Detroit is hardly a shining example of the perfect city, managed by the market! :rotfl: