York House, Twickenham: serves as Richmond Council’s town hall
Controversial rules allowing offices to be converted to homes without the need for planning permission have now been in place for nearly six months, but details on the take-up of the new permitted development rights remain sketchy. Are applications continuing to pour in after an initial flurry of activity, or has interest died down? We examine data from one south-west London borough to try to find out.
In July, an earlier blog article mapped prior approval applications to convert offices to homes in the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, which according to research carried out by Planning had by this summer received more applications than any other council. At the time of July’s blog post, the borough had received 35 such applications. New data extracted from the council’s planning pages reveals that prior approval applications are continuing to flood in. The borough – which said it was “extremely concerned” about the impact of the new policy ahead of its introduction – has now received 92 applications.
Of the 92 prior approval applications received by the borough, prior approval has been granted in 27 cases, while the council concluded that 13 of the applications did not require prior approval. A further 13 applications have been refused, 34 are “in progress” and five have been withdrawn by the applicant, the data reveals.
As highlighted by this blog in July, Richmond Council was one of 165 local authorities which applied to the Department for Communities and Local Government for an exemption to the rules, and was among the majority of councils which failed to secure an opt-out. It is particularly concerned about the impact of the eased planning rules, which came into force on 30 May, as it fears that the high value of housing in the borough will drive the owners of offices to cash in and covert their premises into flats, potentially displacing business and employment opportunities.
View office-to-residential applications in the borough using the interactive map below. Click on the icons to view details of each prior approval application, including a link to the relevant page on the council’s planning pages.
Picture credit: Maxwell Hamilton, Flickr