Westminster City Council is introducing a new policy to protect office space from being converted into residential use.
The council is launching an Article 4 direction through its City Plan to preserve the authority’s ability to control office to residential conversions through planning decisions.
It comes after the borough lost more than 3.2m sq ft of office space to residential between 2013 and 2017.
Under national planning policy, offices can be converted to residential without planning permission through “permitted development rights”.
The council’s new policy will ensure that even after the government makes the relaxation of planning controls for these changes of use permanent, full applications for planning permission will be required by
Westminster so it can take decisions based on all the relevant issues – and where appropriate protect office space.
Westminster City Council cabinet member for planning and public realm, Daniel Astaire, said: “We are committed to ensuring the right kind of growth in Westminster, and this includes ensuring the continued prosperity of our residents, of London as a whole and, indeed, of the whole country. We are also determined to use our planning powers to maintain our unique neighbourhoods. This is the approach we are taking in revising our City Plan.
“We have experienced a rapid loss of office space in Westminster. It’s a worrying trend. Not only does this change the character and feel of our communities but our reputation as a political and professional centre relies upon maintaining the office spaces which allow business to flourish.
“This policy helps us to strike a balance and ensure that as well as delivering more housing we can also retain suitable professional space for businesses to operate in order to capitalise on investment such as the soon-to-open Elizabeth line.”
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