Image: Dreamstime / Andrew Bartlett
Labour has proposed abolishing the conversion of office blocks into accommodation without planning permission under permitted development rights.
The party said that permitted development rights, introduced in 2013, offer developers a “get-out from requirements to provide affordable housing and meet basic quality rules such as space standards creating ‘rabbit-hutch’ flats”.
A total of around 42,000 new housing units have been converted from offices since 2015.
Shadow housing secretary John Healey said: “To fix the housing crisis, we need more genuinely affordable, high-quality homes. This Conservative housing free-for-all gives developers a free hand to build what they want but ignore what local communities need.”
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But the proposals were greeted with opposition from Caridon Property, which has a 1,000-strong portfolio of low-income housing across London and the south of England, with a mix of studio and two-bed apartments that have all been delivered through PDR. It warned that the move would hurt the poorest most.
Akeel Alidina, managing director at Caridon Property, said: “Without permitted development rights, we wouldn’t have been able to create the hundreds of low-cost homes we manage today. Many of these flats house people who would otherwise be sleeping rough on the streets, or stuck in a B&B or hostel, where they’d have less space, privacy and security, and costing the taxpayer more in nightly accommodation fees.
“Our buildings, like many housing estates, have their fair share of problems. Yet the problem here isn’t permitted development, but a lack of funding for the police, social services and recent welfare reforms.
“Abolishing PDR would hit the poorest and most vulnerable most by reducing their housing options and also removing the one single policy that has done most to boost new housing supply in recent years by allowing new homes to be built faster and more sustainably.
“The size of homes in many office-to-residential conversions has been criticised by some but the fact is that by making housing more compact we can make it more affordable, which is why the Mayor of London is backing Pocket Living. We urge the Labour party to rethink their plans, as they risk making the housing crisis worse, not better.”
