Evidencing a vacant building credit claim: a checklist

The vacant building credit reduces the affordable housing contribution on a scheme that brings a vacant building back into use or replaces it, by crediting the existing gross floorspace against what would otherwise be sought. It is worth real money on a conversion, and it is refused more often than it is granted, almost always on evidence rather than on principle. The credit turns on two questions the council will ask early: was the building in lawful use, and has that use been abandoned.

Build the evidence pack before you submit. Assembling it after a case officer has queried the claim is slower and weaker, because everything you produce then looks like it was produced to answer the query.

What the credit does to the contribution

National policy offers a developer a financial credit equivalent to the existing gross floorspace of relevant vacant buildings when the local planning authority calculates the affordable housing contribution. In practice the authority works out the contribution for the whole scheme, then discounts it in proportion to the vacant floorspace being reused or replaced.

So a scheme that replaces a vacant building with a new one of the same floorspace can extinguish the contribution. A scheme that doubles the floorspace keeps roughly half of it. The arithmetic is simple. The argument is never about arithmetic.

The credit sits within the wider obligations negotiation, so set it out in the Planning Statement and in any accompanying draft heads of terms, rather than leaving it to be discovered in a viability appendix.

The vacancy test and its wording

Guidance frames the credit around buildings that are vacant and are being brought back into lawful use or demolished and replaced. Two exclusions matter. The credit does not apply to buildings that have been abandoned. And it does not apply where the building has been made vacant for the sole purpose of redevelopment, which councils read as covering a deliberate emptying of a building shortly before an application.

Neither exclusion has a fixed time period attached to it in national guidance, which is why councils apply local thresholds in supplementary planning documents and why claims on similar facts come out differently in different boroughs. Check the adopted local position before you price the credit into a land bid.

Evidence that shows the building was in lawful use

The claim needs a documented lawful use, not just an empty building. Collect the following:

1. The planning history: the original permission or evidence that the use predates the need for permission, plus any lawful development certificate under section 191 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990
2. Rating evidence: business rates records showing the assessment, the description of the hereditament and the dates it was occupied and then emptied
3. Occupation evidence: leases, licences, rent demands and service charge accounts naming the occupier and the term
4. Utility and service records: metered consumption showing an operating building, and the dates supply was reduced or disconnected
5. Marketing evidence: agents' particulars, the asking rent or price, the marketing period and a schedule of enquiries and offers
6. Physical evidence: dated photographs inside and out, insurance inspections, and any security or maintenance contracts that show the building was kept rather than left

The strongest packs are chronological. A single table running from the last occupation date to the application date, with a document reference against each entry, does more for a claim than a long narrative.

Abandonment and how it defeats a claim

Abandonment is a legal concept, not a synonym for empty. The courts look at the physical condition of the building, the length of time it has been out of use, whether any other use has intervened, and the owner's intentions as shown by conduct. A weatherproof unit marketed continuously for four years is not abandoned. A roofless shell with trees growing through it and no marketing history very likely is.

Intention is where owners damage their own case. Applying for a residential consent while telling the valuation office the building is derelict, or removing services to save standing charges, produces a paper trail that reads as giving up on the lawful use. If the building has to be mothballed, mothball it deliberately and record why.

The related point, and the one that catches conversions of older commercial stock, is that abandonment extinguishes the lawful use entirely, so it affects much more than the credit. Our note on abandonment of use sets out the four-part test and how it is argued.

Deliberate vacancy and the council's response

Where the council suspects the building was emptied to manufacture the credit, it will look for a lease surrender close to the application date, a marketing campaign that was never serious, or an occupier moved to another property in the same ownership.

The counter-evidence is commercial. Show why the occupier left, show the rent that could not be achieved, show the void period across comparable stock in the same location if a local agent will put it in writing. Where the building was empty on purchase, say so plainly and produce the sale documents. A claim that explains an awkward fact survives better than one that leaves it for the officer to find.

Calculating the credit

Work in gross internal or gross external floorspace consistently with the authority's own measurement basis, and state which you have used. Exclude any floorspace that was not part of the vacant building, including later extensions built without permission and structures that are not buildings.

An illustrative case: a vacant former workshop of 900 m² is replaced by 1,800 m² of flats in an authority seeking 30 per cent affordable housing. The credit covers half the new floorspace, so the contribution is calculated on the remaining half, and the policy percentage is applied to that. Numbers are illustrative only, and the authority's own formula and the tenure split in its adopted plan will decide the real figure.

Where the scheme is also relying on a Viability Assessment, keep the two arguments separate. Running them together invites the officer to treat the credit as a viability request, which it is not.

Presenting the claim with the application

Put the credit in its own short statement rather than burying it in the Affordable Housing Statement narrative. Set out the floorspace, the measurement basis, the vacancy chronology, the lawful use evidence, the response to abandonment and the resulting calculation, then append the documents in the order they appear in the chronology.

Raise it at pre-application. A case officer who has seen the chronology before validation will tell you which limb they doubt, and that feedback costs you nothing.

And expect the section 106 drafting to lag the agreement in principle. Ask for the credit to be recorded in the heads of terms with the floorspace figure written into the schedule, because a credit agreed in correspondence and omitted from the deed is a credit you will argue about at completion.

Structuring that evidence into a submission-ready statement is exactly the kind of drafting PlanScope handles: enter your postcode to see which reports your site needs.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; 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.