Isn’t it time to update the Use Classes Order, in particular its categorisation of residential and quasi-residential uses?
Until replaced in 1987 following a 1985 review, the 1972 Order reflected another age. Those lists of specific special industrial uses (blood boiling, bone burning, maggot breeding…) have been jettisoned. Since 1987 use class A1 has no longer explicitly excluded cats-meat shops or the sale of tripe. Since 1987 office, R&D and light industrial uses have been amalgamated into B1 (notwithstanding the government’s and LPAs’ continuing attempts to this day to maintain distinctions between the respective sub-classes).
Subsequently the 1987 Order has been tinkered with endlessly (13 separate revisions) but never again subjected to a root and branch review. Outside of legal subscriber-only websites, the Planning Jungle’s website probably has the best summary of its current, increasingly convoluted, status.
Three decades on, don’t we need to take a step back and reassess the ways in which we use property and how uses should be categorised so as to reduce uncertainty when it comes to determining whether changes should engage the planning system and as to how policies are to be applied?
The “C” classes in particular continue to pose problems. There are in reality many permutations and gradations of residential use.
The current “C” classes
We need to consider whether 2016 reality slots easily into the following pigeon holes:
Use class C1 is defined as “hotels, boarding and guest houses where no significant element of care is provided”, specifically excluding hostels, which are “sui generis” (not in any use class).
Use class C2 is defined as use as “residential care homes, hospitals, nursing homes, boarding schools, residential colleges and training centres”. Secure residential institutions are in a separate class, C2A.
Use class C3 is defined as use “as a dwellinghouse (whether or not as a sole or main residence) by—
(a) a single person or by people to be regarded as forming a single household
(b) not more than six residents living together as a single household where care is provided for residents; or
(c) not more than six residents living together as a single household where no care is provided to residents (other than a use within class C4)
Use class C4 is defined as small shared houses “occupied by between three and six unrelated individuals, as their only or main residence, who share basic amenities such as a kitchen or bathroom”, otherwise known as homes in multiple occupation (HMOs) although use as an HMO occupied by more than six individuals is sui generis.
The reality
However the spectrum in the real world includes:
– dwellings occupied on a longterm basis by a single household up to six residents where no care is provided (slam dunk C3 whether or not owner-occupied, PRS or in any affordable housing tenure, or indeed whether left empty for much of the year)
– serviced apartments (section 25 of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1973 provides that in Greater London, the use as temporary sleeping accommodation, for 90 days or less, of any residential premises involves a material change of use – so C1 not C3 if the occupation is relatively short-term, otherwise possibly sui generis, but then again, increasingly, high end apartments come with significant concierge, cleaning and other services, so where is the boundary between serviced apartment use and C3?)
– aparthotels – just a clunky word denoting a block of serviced apartments, or is there a distinction?
– longterm occupation of hotel rooms (how longterm would the occupation have to be for the use to fall outside C1? The 1975 case Mayflower Cambridge Limited v Secretary of State for the Environment and Cambridge City Council 73 L.G.R. 517 talks of hotels serving a “transient population” with no indication of what that translates to in terms of weeks or months. A season could be said to be transient. What about a year?)
-purpose-built student housing (probably sui generis but differing approaches are taken by LPAs, illustrated by a recent NLP blog post)
– co-living in purpose-built blocks with a high degree of communal facilities, more akin in many ways to a student hall of residence than traditional C3 (again sui generis?)
– hostels/HMOs with more than six individuals staying (sui generis but often difficult to draw a boundary line with C1 applying criteria set out in Panayi v Secretary of State for the Environment [1985] J.P.L. 783 and R. (on the application of Westminster City Council) v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2015] EWCA Civ 482)
– extra-care accommodation (either C2 or C3 depending on the level of care and self-containment)
– airbnb type short term lets (not now jeopardising C3 use of the dwelling if the short-term lets are for no more than 90 days of the year, following section 25A of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1973, introduced by section 44 of the Deregulation Act 2015, otherwise probably sui generis?)
Good for the lawyers, as they say. Not good at all for ensuring that schemes can come forward to meet modern housing (and funders’) needs or to reflect what modern policy priorities may be.
Simon Ricketts 1.7.16
Personal views, et cetera
SIMONICITY 