Homes that have been converted from offices are not always of the same high standard as traditional new housing due to a lack of planning control, it is suggested in a new study.
Indeed, units delivered through the extended permitted development programme often don’t meet national space standards and they are proceeding without full formal planning in England, according to the research report commissioned by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
It examined conversions in Camden, Croydon, Leeds, Leicester and Reading, five councils with high rates of permitted development schemes and site visits to 568 buildings found an inconsistency in the quality of developments.
Just 30% of units delivering through permitted development met national space standards and while examples of extremely high quality housing conversions were found, there were also examples that had no amenity space, low quality design and were poor locations for residential amenity.
The research indicated that office to residential under permitted development had produced a higher number of poor quality housing than those governed through full planning permission. In Glasgow, where the conversions require full planning permission, the report found higher quality residential schemes maintained with better space standards.
The potential impact on local publicly funded infrastructure was also assessed. As the schemes were not making Section 106 contributions, local authorities were subject to further losses of £4.1 million due to reduced planning fees and a potential loss of £10.8 million as well as 1,667 affordable housing units.
Developers and agents from the 30 stakeholders cited many policy benefits including delivering more housing units, regeneration of town and city centres, and quicker implementation.
The report voices several concerns including the removal of the opportunity for local authorities to weigh up costs/benefits of a specific development and refuse permission if necessary and the impact on the quality of housing and evidence of the reduction of affordable housing contributions in the case of office to residential conversions.
It also said there are concerns about rural residential developments not being sustainable due to added road traffic when in the past local authorities could block agricultural to residential conversions.
The report, commissioned by RICS and written by teams from University College London and the University of Sheffield makes a number of recommendations, including introducing safeguards to the prior approvals process, for example, adding minimum space standards.
It also recommends developers giving careful consideration to the wider implications of their schemes on communities and people’s everyday quality of life.
‘The idea of reusing vacant office space as housing is a good one. The way this is currently governed as permitted development in England is, however, highly problematic. Whilst we saw some high quality conversions of office buildings to residential use during our detailed case study research, we also saw many other examples of very poor quality housing,’ said Ben Clifford, senior lecturer at UCL’s Bartlett School of Planning.
‘These issues included problems over external design, location, residential amenity and the size of the housing units leading to strong concerns about the quality of life for residents. Furthermore, there were examples of adverse impacts for local businesses from the conversion of occupied office space to housing, and none of these conversions were contributing properly towards local affordable housing need, the costs of public infrastructure associated with the additional housing units, or the costs of local authority monitoring of these schemes. We believe there is a need for a better regulatory approach to the change of use of office space to housing,’ he added.
According to John Henneberry, professor of property development in the department of urban studies and planning at the University of Sheffield, when planning regulation was reduced by the extension in permitted development rights the expectation was that developers large and small would exploit this additional freedom to produce more dwellings.
‘This occurred. Tens of thousands of dwellings were realised through the exercise of permitted development rights since they were expanded in 2013/2014. While the issues raised by large office to residential conversions have been the subject of much continuing debate, the other outcomes of this deregulation have not received such attention,’ he explained.
‘Yet the number of dwellings resulting from small scale conversions of offices and other non-residential buildings to housing, and of agricultural buildings to housing, have both individually exceeded those resulting from large scale office to residential developments. This highlights the need to learn more about the impacts of these diffuse, incremental changes,’ he added.
