Class E change of use: moving a unit inside the class

If your unit is already in Class E, you can usually switch it to another Class E use without any planning application at all. The Class E change of use rules work through section 55(2)(f) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which says that a change within the same use class is not development. No development, no permission needed. The traps are elsewhere: planning conditions attached to an old permission, the physical works you want to carry out, and whether your existing lawful use really is Class E in the first place.

Class E was created on 1 September 2020 by the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2020, which swept the old A1, A2, A3 and B1 classes into one commercial, business and service class.

What the commercial, business and service class covers

The class has seven limbs, and the breadth of it still surprises landlords.

So a bank can become a gym, a shop can become a nursery, and an office can become a dental practice, with no application. That is the whole point of the 2020 reform.

What sits outside the class matters just as much. Pubs and drinking establishments, hot food takeaways, cinemas, concert halls, live music venues, nightclubs and petrol filling stations are all sui generis, which means each is in a class of its own and any move to or from them is a change of use needing permission. A restaurant in E(b) that starts trading mainly as a takeaway has moved to sui generis and needs an application, whatever the lease says.

Moves that need no application

Where both the old and the new use sit inside Class E, there is nothing to apply for. You do not need prior approval, you do not pay a fee, and no Community Infrastructure Levy liability arises from the change itself.

Two things are still worth doing. Write a dated file note recording the change, with photographs and the date trading started, because in ten years that note is your evidence. And check the title and the lease, since a user covenant restricting the permitted use is a private matter the council has no interest in and cannot waive.

Deliveries, opening hours and staff numbers are not part of the use class question. They become relevant only if a condition controls them.

Where physical works still need consent

The use change is free. The building works usually are not.

• A new or altered shopfront on a building in a conservation area, or any works to a listed building, need consent in their own right
• External extraction ductwork for a kitchen or a salon is development, and often the single most contentious element
• Plant, condensers and air handling units on a flat roof or rear elevation need permission where they are not covered by permitted development
• A mezzanine floor inserted in a retail unit that increases the floorspace beyond the threshold in section 55(2A) of the 1990 Act counts as development
• Signage is dealt with separately under advertisement consent

Extraction is where most food and beauty uses come unstuck. A nursery moving into a former office rarely needs more than internal work, while a cafe needs a duct that terminates above eaves level and a case that odour will be controlled. The evidence for that sits in a Ventilation and Extraction Statement, and the same logic applies to the extraction and odour issues in a nail bar or salon. Plant noise is assessed separately against BS 4142 in a Noise Impact Assessment, and environmental health officers comment on both.

Conditions that pin the use down

This is the real limit on Class E flexibility. A planning permission can restrict the use of a building to something narrower than its use class, and where it does, the condition governs.

Conditions of this kind are common on units consented in the last thirty years. Typical wording limits the premises to retail use within Class A1 as it stood at the date of the permission, or restricts the floorspace, or controls hours. Where the permission predates September 2020 and refers to the old classes, the condition still bites according to the meaning the class had when the permission was granted. A condition restricting use to A1 therefore continues to prevent a move to office or gym use, even though both are now in the same class as the shop.

The route out is an application under section 73 to vary or remove the condition. It is a full planning judgement on that condition, so the council can refuse, and it attracts a fee and consultation. Varying restrictions on trading is the same mechanism described in the note on varying trading hours under a section 73 application.

Always read the decision notice for the unit before assuming flexibility. Not every unit has one.

What Article 4 directions can and cannot touch

This point is widely misunderstood. An Article 4 direction withdraws permitted development rights granted by the General Permitted Development Order 2015. A change within Class E is not permitted development, because it is not development at all. An Article 4 direction therefore cannot stop you moving from a shop to an office inside Class E.

What Article 4 directions do bite on is the separate permitted development right to change from Class E to residential use under Class MA of Schedule 2 Part 3, and the older rights covering changes out of the commercial class. Many councils have made directions covering town centres and shopping frontages precisely to control that. So if your plan ends in flats rather than another commercial use, the direction matters a great deal. If it ends in a gym, it does not.

Proving the existing lawful use

Everything above depends on knowing what the lawful use is now, and that is not always what the tenant says or the rates list records.

Work from the documents in this order: the most recent planning permission and its conditions, any lawful development certificate, historic decision notices held on the council's public register, and then evidence of actual use over time such as accounts, tenancy agreements, invoices and dated photographs. Where the building has drifted through several occupiers without applications, the lawful use may be a hybrid or may have become sui generis without anyone noticing.

A lawful development certificate under section 191 of the 1990 Act, for an existing use, or section 192 for a proposed one, is the only formal way to confirm that a use is lawful. It costs a fee and takes eight weeks, and on any transaction where the use is doing real work in the valuation it is money well spent. A certificate under section 192 can also confirm that a proposed switch inside Class E needs no permission, which is useful for a lender who wants more than an opinion.

Keep the records. The commercial class gives you freedom to move between uses without asking anyone, and the price of that freedom is that nobody else is keeping a record of what you did.

To see which supporting documents a change of use would need where works are involved, enter your postcode on PlanScope and it will flag the reports your site is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it, and use a lawful development certificate where the lawfulness of a use needs to be settled. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.