Calm before the reform: extensions to permissions, major changes to use classes & new PD rights

By the end of Summer 2020, several significant permanent and temporary changes to planning legislation will be in force.

The Business and Planning Act 2020 is now partially in force. For planning, this means applications for temporary pavement licences – which include deemed planning permission – may now be made and determined. James Fryatt’s blog 'A Licence to Refill' summarises the provisions. Also in force is the permanent legislation that allows an Inspector to pick and mix elements of the three appeal procedures to create a bespoke procedure.

Provisions coming into force on 28 July will allow fast track applications to be made to modify construction hours: Tom Davies’s blog outlines how this will work.

And sections 17 to 19 of the Act, which allow for some planning permissions and listed building consents to be revived or extended, come into force on 18 August and Tom has reviewed this legislation too in Business and Planning Act 2020: reviving or extending permissions and consents.

The temporary amendments to the CIL Regulations, which give some relaxations for SMEs with a turnover of less than £45 million are now in force and covered in the blog CIL-ing out? Deferred payments for struggling SMEs but no wider relief by Harry Bennett.

There have been some temporary COVID-19 related amendments to the GPDO recently, including allowing for more frequent local authority markets and relaxing what types of land benefit from temporary use permitted development rights. Together with the pavement licences they are part of a Government drive to create safe, outdoor spaces that allow the hospitality industry to reopen, as town centres expert Matthew Pochin-Hawkes explains in The High Street isn’t dead, long live the High Street #4 - Repurposing for Alfresco Summer Dining.

Permanent long term changes to use classes, notably relating to uses often found in retail and leisure destinations, will come into force on 1 September. Retail planning expert Peter Wilks considers the potential implications alongside a summary of the new use classes.

And while use class B1, which includes office, research and development and light industrial will fall within a new service use class, for the purposes of the new permitted development right to knock down B1 or residential and rebuild with residential, those uses will still fall within that use class. Jennie Baker explains this long awaited new PD right, which will come into force on 31 August, in Tubthumping: knock down and rebuild permitted development rights.

In addition to this new right, there will be five permitted development rights to add storeys to create residential floorspace. The first published of these – the additional storeys to residential buildings – comes into force on 1 August, and is explained in a blog by Jennie Baker.  The other additional storeys PDRs (Part 20 Classes, AA, AB, AC and AD) will come into force on 31 August and are explained in New homes: extending into the sky!.

And finally, from 1 August, providing adequate natural light to habitable rooms will be a prior approval matter for most prior approval applications to change use to residential and for the new PDRs that permit new residential floorspace. In his blog, our Neighbourly Matters Director Toby Rogan-Lyons considers how this might be assessed.