change of use- Residential House to Office (Planning Permission Advice Needed)

awara

Hello

Sorry not sure if this is in right category but I thought it is related to small business)

I work from home and now I feel like I need to move out and get a proper office to deal with the work load.

At the moment I visit the clients, do work on their site however most of the time I bring work to home office.

I have looked around to find a suitable office but can not find one in the area where I want it. however I have another residential property on the Main Road that is usually let to students but because of recent developments of 3-4 Student Halls in the area the property is empty for a while.


Will it be easy to get a planning permission to change it from Residential to Offices (Accountancy Services)?

Anybody has first-hand experience of such change of use application.

Thanks

lincroft1710

It will depend on several factors.

If the house is in a wholly residential area - doubtful if pp would be forthcoming.

If there is a housing need in the area, the council may not want to reduce the housing stock.

Why not have an informal chat with the planners?

Savvy_Sue

lincroft1710 wrote: »

It will depend on several factors.

If the house is in a wholly residential area - doubtful if pp would be forthcoming.

If there is a housing need in the area, the council may not want to reduce the housing stock.

Why not have an informal chat with the planners?

This, absolutely. We've done it, and it wasn't 'easy'.

You need to look at what the 'local plan' for that area says. If good office accommodation is in short supply and that area is flagged as an area which would benefit from it, then it shouldn't be too difficult.

However, one thing which MAY go in your favour is if the property is currently an HMO and there's deemed to be enough of that already. But equally, the expectation may be that you should, in order to meet the 'local plan', return it to family accommodation.

That part worked for us, because the property had been an HMO, and returning it to family use was unlikely to be viable because of its precise location.

We had to show what we were doing about parking / cycling - as we weren't increasing the no. of staff we just said what we did currently, stressing our existing provision for bikes / showers / ease of public transport. In that respect, converting a house to offices can work quite well!

We did have to consult the local neighbourhood partnership or whatever name it had at the time. That had its moments!

We did get some pro bono professional advice (small charity), and we did pay for an initial assessment by the planning dept. Both were very helpful.

In the end, it went through OK, although we were told to move a bike shed from the front of the house to the rear of the property, because it's apparently an eyesore. It's hidden behind a hedge so no-one can see it!