Betting shops, vape shops and sui generis retail

The betting shop use class answer is that there is no class. Betting offices are sui generis, meaning they sit in a class of their own, so every move into or out of a betting shop needs planning permission. That single fact drives the whole letting strategy for a unit in a secondary parade, because a landlord with a sui generis tenant has no permitted flexibility to fall back on when the lease ends.

The 2020 reforms made this sharper rather than simpler. Class E swallowed most shops, services and offices, and left a short list of uses outside it with no route back in.

Which retail uses sit outside Class E

Class E covers shops, food and drink consumed on the premises, financial and professional services, indoor fitness, medical and health services, creches and offices. Movement between those limbs is not development. What matters for a landlord is the list that did not get in.

Sui generis uses that regularly occupy shop units include betting offices, pay day loan shops, hot food takeaways, pubs and drinking establishments, laundrettes, amusement arcades and adult gaming centres, cinemas, live music venues, nightclubs, petrol filling stations and premises selling or displaying motor vehicles.

Each of those requires an application for any change of use, in either direction. A hot food takeaway cannot become a cafe without permission, even though a cafe is Class E, and a Class E unit cannot become a betting office without permission either. Our note on adult gaming centres and amusement arcades covers the gambling end of that list, and micro-pubs in former shop units covers the drinking establishment route.

The asymmetry is what catches investors. Buying a unit with a sui generis consent gives you a valuable use and no fallback. Buying a Class E unit gives you flexibility within Class E and no ability to reach the sui generis uses that often pay the highest rent.

Betting offices and pay day loan shops

Betting offices and pay day loan shops were taken out of the former Class A2 and made sui generis by amendment in 2015, precisely so that councils could control their spread through the planning system.

There is a reason planning does the heavy lifting here. Under the Gambling Act 2005 the licensing authority operates with a statutory duty to aim to permit, subject to the licensing objectives, so a premises licence is harder to refuse than a planning permission. Where a council wants to resist a concentration of betting shops in a parade, the planning application is where it happens.

Expect the assessment to turn on frontage policy, the character of the parade and the cumulative position rather than on gambling harm in the abstract. Committee reports on these applications read very differently from the licensing paperwork on the same premises, and both sets of documents end up in the file.

One practical point for landlords. Where a unit has an unimplemented betting office permission, check whether it has been kept alive. A lapsed permission on a unit whose value was underwritten by that consent is a material loss, and the lapse is not always obvious from the title or the marketing particulars.

Vape and shisha premises

Vape retail is more straightforward than it looks. A shop selling vaping products as goods, over a counter, to customers who leave with them, is retail and falls within Class E(a). No application is needed to move a Class E unit to that use.

The complication arrives with consumption on the premises. A lounge where customers sit and vape, with seating, service and a dwell time, has moved away from retail. Where food and drink are served for consumption on the premises it may sit within Class E(b), and where the dominant activity is smoking or vaping on the premises many authorities treat it as sui generis. Shisha premises are usually assessed on that basis, and the outdoor covered areas they typically need raise smoke-free legislation and neighbour amenity questions at the same time.

Two things decide the classification in practice. What proportion of the floor area is given over to seating rather than display and sale, and whether the business model depends on customers staying. A council looking at a unit with fixed seating for 30 people and a small counter will not accept that it is a shop.

If you are letting a unit for this use, get the classification confirmed before completion. A certificate of lawfulness of proposed use is the formal route where the answer carries real money.

Cumulative impact and frontage policies

This is where most refusals come from, and the policy tests are local rather than national.

Read the adopted policy and count the units yourself before you apply. These policies are arithmetic, and a policy permitting no more than a stated proportion of non-Class E frontage either works or does not. Applying in the face of a numerical policy without any other argument wastes a fee.

Where the policy has a threshold you fail, the case has to be built on something else: the length of the vacancy, the marketing evidence, the condition of the unit, the absence of viable retail interest, and the contribution the proposed use makes to footfall.

Shutters, signage and window displays

Solid external roller shutters need planning permission as a material alteration to the external appearance of the building, and they are refused routinely in conservation areas and on active frontages. Open mesh or perforated shutters behind the glazing line are the usual compromise, and internal grilles avoid the issue altogether.

Signage falls under the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007. A fascia sign within the standard conditions may benefit from deemed consent, while illuminated signs, projecting signs and anything on a listed building or in a conservation area generally need express consent. Internally lit box signs attract objections on their own.

Window treatment is the sleeper issue for sui generis retail. Betting offices, gaming premises and some vape shops obscure their glazing for commercial and regulatory reasons, and councils respond with conditions requiring a stated proportion of the shopfront to remain clear and unobscured, with no vinyl film or posters above a set height. Read any such condition before signing a lease, because it may be incompatible with the tenant's own operating standards.

Hours and management conditions

Conditions are where the permission gets its teeth. Expect some combination of opening hours, a limit on deliveries and collections, no external loudspeakers, a litter management obligation, a requirement to keep the frontage clear of A-boards, and in some cases a management plan submitted for approval before opening.

Hours are negotiable at application stage and painful to change afterwards. A section 73 application to vary an hours condition is a fresh assessment of that condition, and an authority that was reluctant first time round will be no keener second time.

Where the use generates cooking odours or plant noise, the conditions get more technical. A Noise Impact Assessment for plant, and extraction details where food is prepared, are the usual requirements, and councils generally expect a suitably qualified author with professional review.

Evidence for a change of use application

Keep the pack proportionate to the unit. For a single shop unit in a parade, what actually moves the decision is:

1. A frontage survey showing every unit in the defined frontage with its current use and class, dated and photographed.
2. Marketing evidence for the unit, with the agent's particulars, the asking rent, the period marketed and a record of enquiries.
3. A plan showing existing premises of the same use within the distance the policy specifies.
4. Confirmation of the existing lawful use, with the planning history and any relevant certificate.
5. Hours, staffing and management proposals, offered rather than waited for.

The policy case belongs in a Planning Statement that engages with the numerical policy directly instead of around it. Larger retail proposals bring in the separate question of whether a Retail Impact Assessment is needed, which is keyed to the national floorspace threshold or a lower local one, and that rarely bites on a single shop unit.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice. Use classification and local frontage policies vary, so check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

Working out which documents a change of use application needs? Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see the likely list. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.