Serviced offices and flexible workspace in Class E(g)

Serviced offices, co-working floors and managed workspace all sit in Class E(g)(i), offices other than a use within Class E(c). So does the conventional single-tenant office they replaced. For most serviced office planning use class questions that is the end of the matter, because movements within Class E do not need planning permission and the operator can change the fit-out, the desk count and the membership model without going near the authority.

Three things can still require an application: physical subdivision that creates separate planning units, a change in character rather than intensity, and a condition on the existing permission that restricts what Class E allows.

What Class E(g)(i) covers

Class E was created by the 2020 amendment to the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987, pulling the former A1, A2, A3, B1, D1 and D2 uses into one broad commercial, business and service class. Limb (g) covers uses that can be carried out in a residential area without detriment to its amenity, and (g)(i) is office use.

A serviced office operator providing desks, private suites, meeting rooms and a staffed reception is in office use. So is a co-working floor sold by the month. The licence rather than lease structure does not change the planning position, because planning control looks at the use of land, not at the form of the occupational agreement.

Ancillary facilities usually come along without difficulty. A members' café, a small gym and bookable meeting rooms fall within other limbs of Class E in any event, and where they serve the building's own occupiers they are ancillary to the office use.

Subdivision, tenancies and the planning unit

The planning unit is the area in a single occupation and single use. A serviced office building with one operator holding the whole and licensing space to members stays one planning unit, which is the simplest position to hold.

Subdividing a commercial building physically is a different question. Section 55(3)(a) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 deems the subdivision of a single dwellinghouse into two to be development, and there is no equivalent deeming provision for commercial premises. So subdivision of an office is not automatically development, but it can amount to a material change of use where the result changes the character of the use rather than just its internal arrangement.

Where separate units are created with their own entrances, their own services and their own occupiers holding leases, you are closer to several planning units than to one. The practical consequences follow quickly: separate units each attract their own permitted development rights, and a 100 m² unit has options a 1,500 m² floor does not. Our note on splitting a commercial unit into two works through that analysis in more detail.

Intensification and whether it needs permission

Intensification on its own is not a material change of use. The question is whether the character of the use has changed, not whether more of it is happening, and that distinction is where most arguments about desk density are won.

Taking a floor from 60 workstations to 110 inside the same envelope, with the same operating hours and the same servicing, is intensification of an office use. It remains office use. What can tip the balance is an off-site effect that changes the character: a step change in parking demand on a residential street, servicing that now needs a van bay on the footway, or a pattern of evening events that makes the building behave like a venue.

If the answer matters commercially, do not rely on an officer's view over the phone. A lawful development certificate under section 192 of the 1990 Act is the only formal way to confirm that a proposed use is lawful.

Cycle parking and shower provision

Where an application is needed, cycle parking is the standard that bites hardest on flexible workspace, because occupancy per square metre is higher than in a conventional office. Local plan standards are usually expressed as spaces per square metre of floorspace, and in London the London Plan sets minimum long stay and short stay provision that boroughs apply directly.

Count the real headcount, not the floor area, when you design the store. A serviced building at full occupancy has more cyclists than the area-based figure predicts, and a cycle store that fills by 9am generates bikes in the lobby and a complaint from the landlord.

Showers and lockers are normally dealt with through a Travel Plan rather than a numerical standard. Offer them. They cost little and they make the travel plan credible.

Servicing, deliveries and waste

A floor with forty small businesses on it receives far more individual deliveries than a floor with one tenant, and each of those businesses generates its own waste stream. That is the operational reality officers worry about, and it is the easiest thing to design out.

What works: a single managed post and parcel room with staffed receipt, a consolidated waste contract with one provider rather than forty, a bin store sized for the actual occupancy with a sensible route to the collection point, and a delivery window that keeps vans off the footway at the school run.

Say all of this in the submission. An operator who explains the servicing model concretely gets a shorter list of conditions than one who leaves the officer to imagine it.

Hours and out-of-hours access

Flexible workspace is sold on 24 hour access, and that is exactly the point a residential neighbour will raise. The noise is not the work. It is car doors, conversations outside the entrance, deliveries at 7am and the air conditioning condensers running overnight.

Where the building adjoins housing, expect pressure for an hours condition. Negotiate on the parts that matter rather than defending the whole: unrestricted access through a single controlled entrance away from dwellings, with restricted hours for deliveries, for external terrace use and for plant operation, is a package most environmental health officers will accept.

Getting it wrong is expensive to fix, because changing it later means an application to vary the condition and a fresh amenity case.

Conditions on occupancy and subdivision

The condition to read carefully is the one restricting Class E flexibility. Wording along the lines of use only as offices within Class E(g)(i) and for no other purpose within Class E is now common, and it removes the internal flexibility the class was designed to provide.

Conditions have to meet the six tests in national guidance, so a restriction needs a planning reason specific to the site rather than a general wish to control future use. Where a condition is proposed, ask for the justification and offer a narrower alternative: a restriction on the uses that actually cause the harm, rather than a blanket ban on moving within the class.

Two other restrictions turn up. A condition preventing subdivision into separate units, which protects larger floorplates in employment policy terms. And, in central areas, an Article 4 direction withdrawing the Class MA right so that offices cannot become housing through prior approval. Check for both before you underwrite the asset.

Set the position out in a Planning Statement that deals with each proposed condition in turn and explains what the operator will actually do. Conditions are negotiated in the officer's report, not after it.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice, so check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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