Lawyers At Irwin Mitchell Call For Help For Businesses Trying To Adapt To Changing Retail Market Place

News that a coalition of retailers, landlords, council and pubs have joined together to call for planning law reform so that abandoned shops can be turned into cafes, galleries and gyms and other businesses receives support by lawyers at national law firm, Irwin Mitchell. However Carl Dyer, Head of Planning believes the system is still going in the opposite direction.

According to figures reported 100,000 jobs have disappeared from the high street over the past 3 years and 1800 shop branches were closed in towns and cities last year alone. Empty units in the middle of towns and villages are often hard to let because of the expense and difficulty of getting permission for change of use. It can take two months at least.

According to the Federation of Small Businesses, "Traditional shop uses have become increasingly blurred as coffee shops also become mini libraries and independent gyms house coffee shops. Although businesses have adapted to challenges, planning laws have not.

Planning conditions seek to regulate every type of floor space, from sale space to a gym floor: "These strict regulations and planning conditions drastically reduce businesses flexibility and adaptability, reducing their ability to complete.

Carl Dyer, Head of Planning at Irwin Mitchell agrees: "Reforming planning restrictions is a great idea and one which can be quite easily addressed: you simply need to simplify the Use Classes Order and the General Permitted Development Order."

He explains 

"At the moment, the Orders are an ever more complicated mess; the result of 30 years of incremental changes. Currently most traditional shops are Class A1, high street office uses are Class A2,  restaurants and cafes are Class A3. There are also Classes A4 and A5 for takeaways and sale of alcoholic drinks. Changes are permitted within Classes; and some changes are permitted between Classes - but mainly in the direction of changing to the A1 retail Class. Changes in the other direction generally need permission.

"And  there are lots of uses which fall outside these classes; and more uses are constantly being dreamed up. Anything which does not "fit" is deem to be in a "class of its own" and permission is needed to change to and from it.

"Sadly too many councils are still fighting yesterday's war: trying to resist the 'loss' of retail uses for fear of diluting the retail offer on their high street. So where planning permission for a change is needed, too many times planning policy dictates that it should not be granted. Even where councils want to be supportive, they still have to require and process planning applications, which add to costs, delay, and uncertainty. As high streets need all the activity and diversification they can get, this is at best counter-productive, and at worst positively harmful."

Dyer believes it would be a very simple reform to put all high street type uses into one Use Class and allow changes between them. He says that as these are statutory instruments, primary legislation is not needed. And there are separate control regimes to regulate noise, fumes, and alcohol, so the planning system could just allow changes of use.

But "Alas, I fear that is unlikely: the legislature's instincts tend very much in the opposite direction." He points out that one of the most recent reforms was to make betting offices a class of their own to make it harder for them to set up in shops.

Meanwhile the pressures on the UK’s high streets continues. The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government has said high streets should specialise if they want to survive. But maybe recognising the contraction in retail floor space and changing the planning laws allowing businesses to adapt would be a far better solution.