Demolition and rebuild will be included under PD rights

Last year, planning minister Brandon Lewis announced that "to further support the delivery of new homes, the rights will in future allow the demolition of office buildings and new building for residential use."

Regulations laid before parliament earlier this month did not include this proposal. However, according to an article in Planning magazine, the government is still intending to amend the PD right but is currently reviewing how to form this section. It will also use the new powers under section 138 of the Housing and Planning Bill to implement it.

The regulations confirmed that the existing office to residential PD right which was initially temporary will now be made permanent.  Amendments will be made to the General Permitted Development Order (GPDO) to reflect this change and will be in force from 6 April.

Under the new changes, developers will have three years to implement any conversions and any current article 4 exemptions will only be effective up until May 2019. The revised GPDO now requires developers to carry out a noise assessment for any conversions.

Planning expert Jamie Lockerbie of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com said: "If the government does use section 138 of the Housing and Planning Bill to introduce these additional PD rights it is likely that it will attach a requirement to get the approval of the relevant local planning authority before the demolition and re-building work commences."

"The question is: what elements will be covered by the approval? At the very least one would expect the method of demolition and the design of the new building to be subject to approval. Clearly LPAs will want the approval to be as comprehensive as possible whereas applicants will want the opposite so as to retain the ‘planning permission lite’ approach that prior approval currently represents," he said.