Office-to-residential conversions have been spreading like wildfire in central Romford recently, with yet another one in the pipeline – this time in London Road, where plans have been announced to convert St Edward’s Court into 105 dwellings. This follows similar developments in Eastern Road and Western Road, amongst others – so why have they suddenly become all the rage? One reason is the relative ease with which office-to-residential conversions can be carried out, all thanks to a recent change in the law regarding Permitted Development Rights. But what actually is Permitted Development, and what are the possible impacts of it regarding the quality and quantity of housing in our manor? Havering Special takes a butchers…
Permitted Development allows property owners to make certain changes to their buildings without having to go through the usual Planning Permission process. In its original form this meant that a homeowner could, for example, build a small one-storey extension on their house without having to apply for permission. Instead, they simply had to inform the council of their plans. However, the law was later extended to include owners of commercial property who wished to convert their buildings to housing. Originally introduced as a temporary measure, in October 2015 the Tory government announced that Permitted Development Rights for office-to-residential conversions would be made permanent. This means that instead of applying for Planning Permission, anyone who wants to convert their office buildings to housing simply has to give ‘Prior Approval’ notification. As a result, the powers of the local authority are greatly curtailed, only being able to consider transport and highway impacts and the risk of flooding or contamination.
Unlike the housing developments that are required to go through the standard Planning Permission process, developers of office-to-residential conversions are not required to comply with any of the legal targets regarding affordable housing or social housing. Research by the Local Government Association revealed that if these developments had been required to adhere to the usual targets, more than 7500 affordable homes would have been built in England over a two-year period.
There have also been concerns about the size of dwellings in these conversions. Although there is currently no legal minimum, there is a recommended National Minimum Space Standard of 37 square meters (398 square feet) – yet the Guardian recently reported on an office-to-residential development in the Borough of Barnet in which many of the flats were only 16 square meters (172 square feet), which is 40% smaller than the average room in a Travelodge!
University College London recently published the results of their extensive study of office-to-residential conversions. Its conclusions on the impact of Permitted Development are unsettling – showing that the system has “allowed extremely poor-quality housing to be developed” and that there is “little evidence of contribution to the additional public infrastructure required to support the quantity of additional housing seen in the case study authorities”.
It is probably not a coincidence that Romford is experiencing so many office-to-residential conversions at the same time that CrossRail is close to completion. A glance at the blurb for some of the local developments confirms that CrossRail is one of the main selling points – along with references to “investment opportunity” and “buy-to-let”.
But let’s try to imagine what the future holds for these homes. In 10 or 12 years time, will they have matured into happy established communities? Or will they have become ghost areas, full of empty homes owned by investors? Or perhaps troubled areas full of ripped-off private tenants? After all, the benefits cap is continuing to push private renters from inner London to areas such as Havering. Only time will tell…
HAVERING SPECIAL 