Class G: adding flats above a shop or office

Class G of Part 3 of Schedule 2 to the General Permitted Development Order 2015 lets you keep a commercial ground floor and add flats above it, without a full planning application. It is a change of use right, and the flats it allows are limited in number. What it does not give you is permission for a single brick of building work, which is where most Class G projects come unstuck: the use change is permitted, the new rear door and the external staircase are not.

What the right actually permits

The class covers a change from specified commercial ground floor uses to a mixed use consisting of that commercial use together with a small number of flats. The commercial element has to remain. Lose the shop entirely and you are outside Class G, and looking instead at the separate route from commercial use to residential use, which has different conditions and a different prior approval procedure.

Three features define the right and all three are set by the Order rather than by the council.

There is a cap on the floorspace of the building that may change use, which is what keeps the class aimed at a shop unit rather than a department store. There is a limit on the number of flats created. And there are matters on which the local planning authority must be asked for prior approval before development begins.

Those limits have been amended more than once since 2015, including changes made when the Use Classes Order was rebuilt in 2020 and further changes affecting new dwellings created under Part 3. Read the current consolidated text on legislation.gov.uk before you rely on a figure, and treat installer literature, agents' particulars and older commentary as unreliable on this point.

Checking the right is available at all

Before any of the detail, four checks decide whether the class applies to your building.

1. The existing lawful use. The right runs from specified commercial uses, so establish the lawful use from the planning history rather than from what the last tenant did. A certificate of lawfulness of existing use under section 191 settles it where the history is thin.
2. Article 4 directions. Many authorities have removed permitted development rights in town centres, conservation areas and areas of housing pressure. The direction is published on the council's website and on the national planning data service.
3. Listed buildings and scheduled monuments. Part 3 rights are generally unavailable where the building is listed, and listed building consent would be needed for the works in any event.
4. Conditions on earlier permissions. A condition restricting the use of the unit, or removing permitted development rights, overrides the Order.

Get these wrong and the prior approval application will be refused as outside the class, which wastes the fee and tells the enforcement team what you were planning.

Prior approval, and what the council can consider

Prior approval is not a planning application. The authority is confined to the matters the Order lists and cannot refuse because it dislikes the scheme in general terms.

The matters typically engaged on residential conversions under Part 3 include transport and highways impacts, contamination risk, flood risk, the impact of noise from nearby commercial premises on the future occupiers, and the provision of adequate natural light to all habitable rooms. Confirm the exact list for Class G in the current Order, because the natural light requirement in particular was added later than the original right.

Prepare evidence for each matter rather than asserting compliance. On noise, that means a short assessment of the commercial noise climate at the proposed windows. On natural light, it means a daylight calculation for each habitable room, with the room layouts and window sizes shown, because a bedroom lit only by a rooflight over a rear extension is where these applications fail.

There is a determination period for prior approval, and if the authority does not notify a decision within it the development may proceed, subject to the conditions in the Order. Diary that date and confirm the start of the period in writing.

The works the class does not permit

This is the trap worth repeating. Class G is a change of use right. Building operations are a separate category of development and need their own permission unless another right covers them.

So the following usually need planning permission in their own right:

• A new or enlarged window, or a change from a shopfront to a residential entrance.
• An external staircase or a new door in a side or rear elevation.
• A rear extension to create circulation space.
• Rooflights or dormers to light the upper floors.
• Plant, flues or extract ducts serving either the flats or the commercial unit.

Some of those may be covered by other permitted development rights, but not reliably in a mixed-use building. Plan the application in two parts from the start: a prior approval submission for the change of use, and a full application for the works, submitted together so the council sees the whole project.

Access, layout and the standards that apply

Independent access to the flats is the practical constraint that kills more schemes than any policy. A flat above a shop needs a lawful route in that does not pass through the commercial unit, plus a means of escape that satisfies Building Regulations.

Where the only frontage is a shopfront, creating a separate door narrows the retail frontage, which the council will assess as part of the works application. Where access must come from the rear, check ownership of the yard, the bin store location and the refuse collection point, because a scheme with no bin storage attracts an objection from the waste team that is hard to answer late.

New dwellings created under Part 3 rights are subject to the nationally described space standard as a condition of the relevant classes, and the natural light requirement sits alongside it. Verify how both apply to Class G in the current Order, then design to them from the outset. Retrofitting a compliant layout into a Victorian first floor with a single rear window is not always possible.

Where the building sits in a conservation area, a new residential entrance cut into a historic shopfront will be judged on its effect on the character of the street, and that assessment happens in the works application rather than in the prior approval. Where the ground floor is being split as well, the tests that govern subdividing a commercial unit apply on top of everything here.

Class G or a full application

Prior approval is faster and narrower. A full application is slower and lets you argue the merits.

Choose the full application where you want more flats than the class allows, where the floorspace exceeds the cap, where an Article 4 direction has removed the right, or where the works are so extensive that the use change is the smaller half of the project. Choose Class G where the building fits, the access works, and you want certainty on principle without a policy argument about the loss of retail frontage.

Either way the supporting evidence overlaps. A Planning Statement setting out the use history and the policy position, a Transport Statement where parking and servicing are in issue, and a Ventilation and Extraction Statement where the ground floor use involves cooking, are the three documents most often missing from a first submission.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a mixed-use conversion at your building is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. A lawful development certificate is the only formal way to confirm that works are lawful, so check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.