This is the British Hospitality Association response to the Portas Review in relation to Use Class Orders. Please feel free to use it also within government as part of the DCLG/BIS review of Use Class Orders. The issue has also been raised in the Tourism Regulation Task Force, set up at the request of the Tourism Minister, for which the BHA is providing the secretariat.

The British Hospitality Association is the national representative association for the hotel, restaurant and catering industry. Our members operate some 40,000 establishments employing around 500,000 people and turnover in the region of £20 billion a year.  This response relates specifically to the need to obtain planning consent to change of use from A1 (shops) or A2 (professional/financial services premises) to A3 (restaurants). What follows in paragraphs 3 to 9 is a paper from one of our major restaurant chain members.

USE CLASS ORDER A3:

The planning policy and local plans for an area are what define its current and future use and are the basis of how we would look at a town or city when planning the expansion of our business.  The development of these plans involves extensive consultation and as such takes a considerable amount of time to finalise and implement.  In view of this timescale the plans tend to be in force for a significant period of time (years) and become the basis for decision making by local planners and planning committee members.

This plan led system is inflexible and is unable to react to either local or national economic factors which impact directly on high streets.  The key example of this is the allocation of primary retail areas in town centres which limit any change of use to A3 based on a finite limit measured either by number of frontages, linear length of frontage etc.  Within these areas A3 restaurant opportunities are extremely difficult to secure as the planning application is always considered to be contra to policy and hence refused.

In the current economic climate the rental levels on certain retail pitches have fallen to levels which are affordable to restaurant users, both existing and new operators, and hence it is purely the local planning policy which restricts this growth.  In many cases landlords end up with empty properties and at best poor quality retail tenants who in turn change the tone of the retail pitch leading to further vacant units as quality retailers look to cluster with like operators.

With the continual stretch on local authority manpower, it is more likely that the planning officers will refer back to the local plan for an area as a reason to refuse a change of use consent rather than either write lengthy reports for planning committees to consider or run the risk of missing their time based determination targets.  This, together with the desperate need to stimulate some of the high streets of our towns and cities, represents a strong lobby to review the flexibility in the planning system.

The use classes order were introduced in the late 70′s/early 80′s as a way for business to circumvent the planning policies for an area and allow the markets to dictate land use and hence stimulate growth.  It has worked well in streamlining certain change of use applications and has allowed a greater segmentation of the various high street uses.     It has however not favoured the A3 restaurant use, albeit the designation of an A4 public house use has helped to define the restaurant use as distinct from pub use on the high street.

Any proposals to amend the use classes order to permit change of use from A1/A2 to A3 would be welcomed as it would at a stroke resolve the issues of dated and inflexible local planning policies noted above.  Any change of use to A3 use could still contain conditions limiting further change to use to A4 and the numerous environmental obligations which are loaded on the current A3 planning consents granted.  At the very least a change in the regulations which removed the presumption against change of use from A1/A2 or A3 where it is contra to the plan would help.

Our experiences in [TOWN] are a recent example of the issues we have with A3 planning application in retail areas.  We identified a site just within the retail zoned area which comprised of an existing large retail unit which was being split into a retail unit and a restaurant unit.  The whole building had a frontage of circa 60 ft and hence would post development be split into 2 units of 30 ft or so each.  Our application was initially refused outright by the local planners who did not even refer the matters to committee as it was contra policy. Our subsequent re application was referred to committee and was resoundingly supported by the committee members who understood that an all day restaurant use was actually beneficial to the strength of the retail pitch and overall vitality of the location.  The local policy restricted the loss of retail frontages within the retail zone and hence our argument that actually developing  a single 30 ft retail  frontage from an existing 60 ft frontage did not actually result in a loss of an absolute retail frontage.  Clearly there was a loss of retail provision hence this just illustrates the inflexibility of the local plan system.

We would be pleased to discuss this response with DCLG/BIS and/or the Portas Review team if that would be helpful. We confirm that we have no objection to this response being made publicly available.