Another change in the national planning rules is supposed to help retain the viability and vitality of town centres. The government will allow a range of buildings to be converted to other uses for up to two years without planning permission. So buildings can have their uses changed to shops, financial and professional uses , restaurants and cafes, or offices, for up to 2 years without needing planning permission.
David Mitchell writes about this today in the Observer, and he isn’t impressed:
Unfortunately, having identified the problem, Pickles’s attempt to solve it is perverse. He’s going to relax the planning rules which restrict how buildings are used. It will be a lot easier to use places currently classified as shops, restaurants, offices or leisure facilities as other things. For example, you’ll be allowed to use empty offices as residential property, convert anything into a school, or open a shop or restaurant in an agricultural building, all without planning permission.
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How is that supposed to help our high streets? They’re full of premises currently designated as shops, restaurants or cafes. For these areas to look and be prosperous, they need to be filled with profit-making shops, restaurants or cafes. We don’t want them converted into anything else, because then those streets won’t be high streets any more. And how is allowing people to open exactly the sort of business that was once the preserve of the high street in any barn anywhere going to drive commerce back to our historic trading hubs? Surely it will have the opposite effect.
By the way, this is the David Mitchell who is a comedy writer and performer. Which gives us an excuse to include one of his sketches: