Published alongside the Chancellor’s budget, MHCLG’s new consultation on boosting housing delivery could be set to have a significant impact on permitted development rights and residential environments more widely. Indeed, changes to permitted development rights have frequently proven very popular as a simple measure to provide a big impact on housebuilding.

Permitted development rights to convert offices to residential have been especially popular with developers in urban areas, particularly as they provide a lighter touch approval process and no requirement for affordable housing (there are just four discrete areas for the local planning authority to consider: contamination, transportation/highways, flooding and noise from commercial premises). However, these are rather less popular with local planning authorities, which anticipated that better office stock would be converted first. This had the effect of displacing viable businesses and causing the loss of planning application fees.

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