A developer who turned a Wembley office block into 16 separate apartments has been told to reverse the building’s change to residential use – even though the flats have already been leased and occupied.
High Court planning judge Mrs Justice Lang ruled that RSBS developments had breached planning rules when it developed Mercury House in Wembley, north London.
Unless it can appeal the ruling to a higher court, the developer must now implement a council enforcement notice forcing it to stop the building from being used as dwellings and remove all fixtures and fittings from the building that are associated with residential use.
The case is unusual because the developer applied for, and received, planning permission to convert the office building into flats. Planning permission was given in August 2015, according to the ruling.
However, in November of the same year, the developer applied for permission to build an extension on the property. Permission was granted but only if the additional space was for office use. It was also stated that this permission couldn’t be used in conjunction with the residential permission that had already been granted.
However, in 2016 the council discovered that the residential development differed from the submitted plans and some of the flats used space created by the extension.
When the council raised concerns, the developer made changes to make amends, including removing part of the extension, but all of its changes were without planning permission, the ruling said.
The situation escalated in 2017 when the developer applied for retrospective planning permission and was refused. In its refusal notice the council stated the use was not lawful.
And in March last year the council issued an enforcement notice alleging breach of planning control due to an unauthorised change of use from office to dwellings. It required the developer to stop the property from being used as flats and to remove fixtures and fittings.
The developer appealed the notice, and in October the case went to trial before a High Court judge.
However in her ruling today, Lang J backed the council’s decision.
“I acknowledge that it was an unusual feature of this case that the unlawful building operations… post-dated the commencement of the permitted development works and the grant of prior approval,” she said in her ruling.
Even so, she ruled that it wasn’t a grounds for overturning the notice.
She rejected the developer’s appeal and ordered them to pay the costs of the hearing.
Rsbs Developments Limited v (1) Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (2) London Borough of Brent
Planning Court (Lang J) 17 November 2020
Richard Turney (instructed by Asserson) for the Claimant
Robert Williams (instructed by the Government Legal Department) for the First Defendant Ashley Bowes (instructed by Prospect Law) for the Second Defendant
