Class E five years on: what the 2020 amendment changed

The 2020 amendment to the Use Classes Order did something no previous change had done: it made most high street uses interchangeable without planning permission. Shops, restaurants, offices, gyms, nurseries, clinics and light industry that can operate in a residential area all sit in a single Class E, and movement between them is not development. Five years of practice later, the class e use class changes have reshaped how councils write policy, how landlords draft leases and where the traps now sit.

As at September 2026 the position set out below reflects the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2020, which came into force on 1 September 2020, together with the later amendments to permitted development rights that followed from it. Verify the current text before relying on any of it.

What was merged and what was created

The amendment revoked the old shop, financial and professional services, restaurant, drinking establishment and hot food takeaway classes, along with the business class and parts of the institutional and assembly classes. In their place came three new groupings.

Class E, commercial, business and service, covers retail sale of goods other than hot food, sale of food and drink mostly consumed on the premises, financial and professional services to visiting members of the public, indoor sport and fitness, medical and health services, creches and day nurseries, and offices, research and development and light industrial processes that can be carried out in a residential area without detriment to amenity.

Class F1 covers learning and non-residential institutions: schools, non-residential education, museums, public libraries, halls of worship, law courts and public exhibition halls. Class F2 covers local community uses, including a shop no larger than 280 square metres selling essential goods where there is no other such shop within 1,000 metres, community halls, outdoor sport and recreation areas, and indoor swimming pools and skating rinks.

The uses that stayed outside

Pubs and other drinking establishments, hot food takeaways, cinemas, concert halls, bingo halls, dance halls, live music venues, hotels and petrol filling stations are all sui generis. A use outside a class belongs to no class, so the rule that movement within a class is not development gives no help at all.

That produces the trap that catches most small businesses. A restaurant in Class E(b) can become a shop, a gym or a clinic without permission. It cannot become a hot food takeaway, because a takeaway is sui generis, and the distinction between a restaurant serving food for consumption on the premises and a takeaway turns on where the food is mostly eaten rather than on what is sold. A restaurant that quietly shifts to a delivery-led model has changed its use, and enforcement action on that basis is not unusual.

The other boundary that matters is between a restaurant and a drinking establishment. A venue whose primary purpose becomes the sale of alcohol for consumption on the premises has moved out of Class E into sui generis, and the licensing position does not determine the planning one.

Article 4 directions responding to the change

Councils lost the ability to control shop-to-office or office-to-gym movements, and many responded by making article 4 directions. The commonest remove permitted development rights rather than the Class E flexibility itself, because a direction cannot prevent movement within a class.

The most frequently used are directions removing Class MA, the prior approval route from Class E to residential use, across town centres, employment areas and industrial estates. National policy expects such directions to be limited to situations where they are necessary to avoid wholly unacceptable adverse impacts, and to apply to the smallest area possible, which has produced disputes about their scope.

Check the council's article 4 register before assuming any prior approval route is open, because a direction can exist over a single street. Our note on the Class MA prior approval limits and conditions covers the route where it remains available, including the removal of the floorspace cap and the vacancy requirement in 2024.

Existing conditions and old permissions still bind

This is the part landlords get wrong most often. A planning condition restricting a unit to a specific former use remains in force and is not swept away by the reorganisation of the classes. A permission granted in 2015 with a condition limiting occupation to retail use restricts the unit to retail, whatever Class E now permits, and the way to remove it is an application under section 73 to vary the condition.

Similarly, references in older permissions and agreements to the former classes are read as they were understood when the permission was granted, rather than being translated automatically into the new classes. Read the decision notice and its conditions before advising a tenant that the unit is in Class E. A Planning Statement supporting a section 73 application to remove a restrictive condition is usually short, and it needs to deal with why the restriction is no longer necessary rather than simply noting that the class has changed.

Leases drafted before 2020 often define permitted use by reference to the old classes too. That is a contractual matter rather than a planning one, and a tenant with planning freedom can still be blocked by their lease.

Evidencing lawful use after the change

Where a unit's lawful use is disputed, the question is what it was being used for and when. Evidence of the use as at 1 September 2020, and of continuity since, is what establishes whether a building is now within Class E.

For vacant units the argument turns on the last lawful use and whether it has been abandoned, which depends on the period of non-use, the condition of the premises, the owner's intentions and any intervening use. A lawful development certificate under section 191 or 192 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 is the formal route to settle it, and it is worth the fee before a letting rather than after.

Keep the evidence simple and dated: rates records, accounts, photographs, tenancy agreements, utility bills and licensing records.

How local plans have adapted

Policies that protected retail frontages by counting the proportion of units in a particular use became largely unenforceable, because movements within Class E are not development and cannot be refused. Councils have adapted in three ways.

They apply frontage policies to applications for new development and for changes into or out of Class E rather than within it. They use article 4 directions to restore control of the residential conversion route. And they place more weight on the definition of town centre boundaries and primary shopping areas in the plan itself, which still governs where main town centre uses can go.

The practical result for an occupier is that the flexibility is real but narrower than it sounds. You can change what happens inside a Class E unit without permission, and you will still need permission for the physical works, for any extraction and ventilation, and for signage, and you will still meet environmental health on noise and odour. Our note on those requirements sits with the full report index.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a change of use is likely to need. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. A lawful development certificate is the only formal way to confirm that a use is lawful.