Change of use feasibility report in London, £535

How this differs from change of use drawings

Our change of use drawings service is the job itself: we survey, draw the new layout and submit the application. The feasibility report comes first. It tells you whether the job is worth doing, which route it should take and what could sink it, before you pay for survey and drawings.

If the answer is yes, the next step is usually the drawings, and for a house to a HMO or flats see HMO drawings and two-flat conversions. If the answer is no, you have found out for a small fraction of what a failed application costs.

Is there a permitted development route?

Class MA of Part 3 of the permitted development order lets a building in Class E, which takes in former shops, offices and cafés, change to homes after the council has given prior approval. The use must have been in a qualifying class for a continuous period of at least 2 years before the application, and the current text sets no floor space limit.

The right does not apply to a listed building, a National Park, the Broads, an area of outstanding natural beauty or a World Heritage Site, among other places. Prior approval covers matters including transport, contamination, flooding, noise from nearby commercial premises, natural light in every habitable room and, in a conservation area, the effect of losing a ground-floor commercial use.

• At least 2 years of continuous qualifying use before the application
• Not a listed building or in an excluded area
• Prior approval first, then the change within 3 years of the approval date
• An Article 4 direction can remove a permitted development right locally

Houses, flats and HMOs

A home for a single household is Class C3. A house occupied as a house in multiple occupation by not more than six residents is Class C4, as the Use Classes Order sets out. Whether the move between the two needs permission in your borough turns on any Article 4 direction, which is the first thing we check.

Even where the use class works, the council applies its own policy to the result: how many HMOs already stand nearby, the size of the rooms, and whether new flats meet the nationally described space standard. The report tells you where your address stands on each.

What a paid report gives that a free opinion does not

A free first opinion is usually a short view before a firm quotes for its own work, and it rarely reaches the site. This report includes a visit, so the findings rest on what is there, not only on the listing. It is written by chartered architectural technologists (MCIAT) and you keep it.

It weighs every route, including doing nothing, not only the one we would be paid to draw. You can show it to a lender, a partner or a seller’s agent as the basis for your offer, and if the answer is a clear no, you have it in writing before you spend on drawings.