A1, A3 or A5 planning

steve1500

A sandwich shop has been selling hot & cold sandwiches, baked spuds etc for over 12 years and probably a lot longer than that. Customers have either eaten the food in or taken away.Paying business rates & the usual visits from Enviromental health etc now wanting to sell the business

It has come to light that it only has A1 planning consent. looking at the planning regs it should have had A3 / A5 planning?

My question is, because this has been going on for so long, can you just get this permission?

Thanks

bris

Short answer no, sandwich shops and small takeaways often only have A1 consent because they can only sell a very limited range. This would include only having 1 microwave, one toaster etc and you would not be able to fry chips or cook meals etc. The amount of seating is also very limited. Any retail premises can do this.

The next stage is consent for a coffee or tea room type set up, similar to A1 but would allow more seating.
Next is full blown permission for a restaurant which requires full ventilation etc and is hard to get, not to say also very expensive to do.

Councils may very well grant you permission based on the historic use of the shop, but they always keep the ratio of retail to food in line with the street it's on. They don't want just chip shops and pizza places on the high street so it can be very problematic getting permission.

If the shop is smallish and they already have the seating at it's max with no scope for any more then there is no point in trying to make any expensive changes.

paulwf

My dealings with the council on this sort of thing before was basically to not to ask because then they wouldn't have to investigate and give and answer Sometimes best to leave well alone.

I can fully understand wanting everything watertight before taking over though.

Savvy_Sue

paulwf wrote: »

My dealings with the council on this sort of thing before was basically to not to ask because then they wouldn't have to investigate and give and answer Sometimes best to leave well alone.

:rotfl: Indeed, and DH would concur with this: however when it turned out that his place of employment was in breach of its planning permission and had been since it opened up they decided that this had to be addressed and applied for a variation. In their case they were not supposed to be open in the evenings, and I think it came to light because a nearby business made a complaint.

paulwf wrote: »

I can fully understand wanting everything watertight before taking over though.

Definitely: if that's the situation OP, I'd want the current business to get it sorted before going forward at all!