Permitted Development Rights

The House of Commons Library has produced a useful briefing on Permitted Development Rights which were introduced as a means of speeding up production of homes by dispensing with the usual planning rules.

The government said PDRs can help speed up housing delivery by reducing the “bureaucratic burdens” of the planning system. It said PDRs can help meet its target of delivering 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s.

But a 2020 study commissioned by the government found that homes created through PDRs resulted in “worse quality residential environments” than those that required planning permission from the LPA. The researchers argued that there was a need “to look beyond overall headline numbers to consider whether we are creating the right type of housing, in the right places” (PDF).

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee also expressed concerns that some homes delivered through PDRs were “of poor quality and situated in unsuitable places”. The Local Government Association also raised concerns that LPAs could not require developers to deliver affordable housing or supporting infrastructure for PDR schemes.

PDR has allowed profiteering at the expense of space and quality. Shelter and the Local Government Association (LGA), have argued that, even if PDRs boost housing numbers, they do not deliver “the right type of housing, in the right places”.

Quality of homes delivered through PDRs

An independent study commissioned by the government and carried out by researchers from the University College London (UCL) and the University of Liverpool compared the quality of homes delivered through change-of-use PDRs and schemes which required full planning permission in eleven local planning authorities between 2015 and 2018. The study, which was published in 2020, found “significant differences” between the schemes which required full planning permission and those created through PDRs.

It found:

22% of PDR units met nationally described space standards, compared with 73% of units that required a full planning application.

72% of PDR units had windows on one façade only, compared with 30% of units which received full planning permission. 10 units created through PDRs had no windows. Some PDR units also had layouts which meant the main habitable area had “very little natural light”.

The study concluded that conversions created through PDRs rather than the full planning process seemed to create lower-quality homes “in relation to a number of factors widely linked to the health, wellbeing and quality of life of future occupiers”.

In evidence submitted to the HCLG Committee, researchers who contributed to the study argued that there was a need “to look beyond overall headline numbers to consider whether we are creating the right type of housing, in the right places”. A number of local councils expressed similar concerns about the quality of homes created through PDRs in evidence submitted to the HCLG Committee. Crawley Council criticised “the single-minded focus on housing numbers irrespective of quality”.

Use as temporary accommodation

There are also concerns that homes created through PDRs, regardless of quality, are sometimes used as temporary accommodation for homeless people and/or vulnerable families. Shelter said units created through PDR schemes provided “substandard” accommodation for vulnerable families, which could have a “devastating impact” on their health and wellbeing.

In a report on permitted development rights (July 2021), the HCLG Committee also expressed concern that “some of the homes” created through PDRs were “of poor quality and situated in unsuitable places”. It also expressed concern that “some of the people” living in homes delivered through change-of-use PDRs “do not have the option of living elsewhere”.

You can read the Briefing here.