Meanwhile use and its effect on benchmark land value

Putting a meanwhile use on a site you intend to redevelop changes your viability position, and not always in the direction you expect. Benchmark land value in national guidance is existing use value plus a premium, and existing use value is the value of the land in its current lawful use. A temporary use generating rent looks like it should lift that value. Sometimes it does. Often the income is too short-dated and too expensive to run to move the number much, and the real effects are elsewhere: on the vacant building credit, on how a council reads the site, and on what an objector can argue when you come back for the permanent scheme.

Meanwhile use land value arguments are worth getting straight before the first licence is signed, because the lease structure you choose is hard to unwind later.

What counts as a meanwhile use

A meanwhile use is an interim occupation of land or buildings pending redevelopment: container workspace, a pop-up food yard, surface car parking, storage, a community garden, film production, sports pitches. The defining features are a short term, a low capital fit-out and an exit that does not depend on the occupier's goodwill.

The consent route varies. Some uses fit within permitted development for temporary use of land, which allows use for any purpose for not more than 28 days in a calendar year, reduced to 14 days for markets and for motor car and motorcycle racing, and which does not authorise buildings. Film-making has its own longer temporary right with conditions attached. Anything beyond that needs a temporary planning permission, usually a full application with a condition limiting the period and requiring reinstatement.

Read the permitted development text before relying on it. The day counts are cumulative across the year and they are counted per parcel of land, which trips up sites running several events.

Whether it changes existing use value

Start from what existing use value means. It is the value of the land in its existing lawful use, disregarding the prospect of the development being applied for. It is not the price paid, and hope value is excluded. Where a site is vacant and derelict, existing use value is low, sometimes nil once holding costs are counted.

A temporary use can raise it, on two conditions. The income has to be real and net of the cost of earning it. And the use has to have a term the valuer can capitalise.

Both conditions fail more often than not. The costs of running a meanwhile use are not small: business rates, insurance, security, site management, utilities, the capital cost of the fit-out, and the cost of decommissioning at the end. A gross rent roll that looks like a yield turns into a thin net figure. Then the term: a licence terminable on a month's notice has almost no capital value, because a purchaser buys the right to receive income only for as long as it is contractually certain.

So the honest valuation position is usually that a meanwhile use produces a modest uplift in existing use value, supported by net income over a stated term, rather than a step change. Where a developer argues otherwise, expect the authority's valuer to ask for the management accounts.

The vacant building credit trap

This is the point most often missed. The vacant building credit in national policy reduces affordable housing contributions where a vacant building is brought back into use or demolished and replaced. It depends on the building being vacant, and authorities look at whether a building has been brought into occupation deliberately to create or preserve an advantage.

Put a meanwhile use into an empty building and you may lose the credit, or at least hand the authority an argument that the building was not vacant at the relevant date. On a scheme where the credit is worth more than two years of interim rent, that is a bad trade. Work out both numbers before signing anything, and set the affordable housing position out properly in the Affordable Housing Statement rather than leaving it to the appraisal narrative.

Lease structures that protect the redevelopment

Three principles, in order of importance.

Exclude security of tenure. Business tenancies attract protection under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 unless the parties contract out by the statutory procedure, or the term certain is short enough to fall outside the protection. A meanwhile use occupier with security of tenure is a planning problem that turns into a litigation problem.

Use licences where occupation is shared, and leases where it is exclusive. Labelling exclusive occupation a licence does not make it one, and a badly drafted licence can be construed as a lease with all the consequences that follow.

Keep the term shorter than your programme and renew it. Rolling short arrangements cost more in management time and give you an exit that matches reality. Build in a landlord break tied to the grant of planning permission, not to a fixed date, so the trigger is the event you actually care about.

Document reinstatement obligations and take a deposit for them. Condition compliance at the end of a temporary permission is your liability, not the occupier's, unless the paperwork says so.

What councils think about temporary consents

Authorities have become more willing to grant temporary permissions on stalled sites, partly because an active frontage beats hoardings and partly because meanwhile uses support town centre policy aims. What they are cautious about is any temporary use that could become permanent or that creates a constituency.

Three practical consequences.

A use that runs long enough becomes immune from enforcement, and the enforcement time limit in England is now ten years for all breaches. Temporary consents that lapse unnoticed can, over time, turn into a lawful use you did not intend to create.

A community use can acquire policy protection. A well-loved meanwhile garden or community hall can attract local plan protection as a community facility, or nomination as an asset of community value, and the loss of it then becomes a material consideration weighing against your permanent scheme. That does not mean avoid community uses. It means write the temporary nature into every piece of communication from the start, and expect to be held to what you said.

An interim use that generates noise, traffic or odour can also prejudice the permanent scheme by establishing a baseline you then have to design around, or by souring the neighbours whose representations the committee will read.

Evidence for the benchmark land value argument

If you are running the argument that a meanwhile use has lifted existing use value, build it properly.

1. A valuation from a suitably qualified valuer, stating the basis, the term assumed and the yield applied.
2. Net income evidence over at least two accounting periods, with cost lines identified.
3. The occupational documents, showing what is contractually certain.
4. Market evidence of comparable transactions where interim income was in place, which is thin, so say so rather than overstating it.
5. A clear statement of what happens to that income on redevelopment, because it stops.

Then reconcile the figure with the rest of the appraisal. A Viability Assessment that claims a meanwhile-use-enhanced benchmark while showing a nil abnormal cost for decommissioning is internally inconsistent, and reviewers find that quickly. Councils expect a suitably qualified author for this document and professional review before submission is strongly advised. Assume publication too, which is the position national guidance starts from and which we cover in viability at appeal.

Sequencing the interim and the permanent application

Run the temporary application and the pre-application discussion on the permanent scheme in parallel, with the same officer where possible. Align the end date of the temporary consent with a realistic start on site, and ask for a period long enough that you are not returning for an extension in eighteen months.

Where the site is employment land, take care. A temporary non-employment use can be used as evidence that the employment use is no longer viable, or as evidence that the site still functions, depending on who is arguing. Our note on employment land release sets out what councils look for.

One honest uncertainty: there is no settled national position on how much an interim income should move benchmark land value, and district valuer practice varies. Which is why the evidence, rather than the theory, is what decides it.

See PlanScope pricing: one free report, £50 per report, or Professional for unlimited reports.

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.