Don't Know B2 from Sui Generis? Here's Your Guide to New Planning Use Classes

Property listings are often accompanied by a letter - such as B, C, E, F - or maybe the Latin expression "sui generis".

Those designations each represent a distinct planning use class, which categorises properties by allowable occupancy use - including commercial, residential, or in the case of sui generis, a medley of uses that fall outside the defined limits of other categories.

Understanding these use classes, which were established in 1987, is important for United Kingdom real estate investors, because any proposed change of use for land or buildings may require an application for planning permission or prior approval from the local planning authority. Officials in England and Wales amended these use classes in 2020, mainly to accelerate the conversions of commercial properties vacated during the pandemic.

Previous planning use classes, such as Class A, B1, B3, B4 to B7, and Class D, were revoked in 2020 and folded into the existing use classes. These discontinued planning use classes may still appear on some listings.

"What the use classes order does is bundle together things that you can do within that building without having to apply for planning permission," said Nicola Gooch, a partner at Irwin Mitchell LLP who specialises in planning and real estate development. "Planning applications are determined by committees of elected officials - which can make the decision-making process both highly political and somewhat unpredictable."

To save yourself that trouble, here is a summary of property use classes in England and Wales:

Current Use Classes

Class B: Industrial and Storage

• B2 General Industrial: Use for general industrial processes other than those allowed in residential areas, which fall within class E(g). B2 uses exclude incineration purposes, chemical treatment or landfill or hazardous waste (which are "sui generis" uses).
• B8 Storage or distribution: Open-air storage.

Class C: Hotels and Residential

• C1 Hotels: Hotels, boarding and guest houses (excluding hostels).
• C2 Residential Institutions: Residential care homes, hospitals, nursing homes, boarding schools, residential colleges and training centres.
• C2A Secure Residential Institution: Includes prisons, young offenders' institutions, detention centres, secure training centres, custody centres, short-term holding centres, secure hospitals, secure local authority accommodations or military barracks.
• C3 Dwellinghouses: This class includes:
  
  • C3(a) Accommodates a single person or a family (including a couple, married or not), an employer and certain domestic employees (such as an au pair), a caregiver and person receiving the care, or a foster parent and foster child.
  • C3(b) Covers up to six people living together as a single household and receiving care, such as supportive housing for people with learning disabilities or mental health conditions.
  • C3(c) Allows for groups of people (up to six) living together as a single household. This allows for those groupings that do not fall within the C4 definition (see below). For example, a small religious community may fall into this use, or a homeowner who is living with a tenant.
• C4 Houses in multiple occupation: Small shared houses occupied by between three and six unrelated individuals, as their only or main residence, who share basic amenities such as a kitchen or bathroom.

Class E: Commercial, Business and Service

• E(a) Display or retail sale of goods, other than hot food.
• E(b) Sale of food and drink for consumption (mostly) on the premises.
• E(c) Provision of:
  
  • E(c)(i) Financial services;
  • E(c)(ii) Professional services (other than health or medical services); or
  • E(c)(iii) Other appropriate services in a commercial, business or service locality.
• E(d): Indoor sport, recreation or fitness (not involving motor vehicles or firearms or use as a swimming pool or skating rink).
• E(e): Provision of medical or health services (except the use of premises attached to the residence of the consultant or practitioner).
• E(f): Crèche, day nursery or day centre (that is not part of a residence).
• E(g): Uses that can be carried out in a residential area "without detriment to its amenity". These include:
  
  • E(g)(i) Offices to carry out operational or administrative functions
  • E(g)(ii) Research and development of products or processes
  • E(g)(iii) Light industrial processes

Class F: Learning and Local Community

• F1 Learning and nonresidential institutions:
  
  • F1(a) Provision of education
  • F1(b) Display of works of art (otherwise than for sale or hire)
  • F1(c) Museums
  • F1(d) Public libraries or public reading rooms
  • F1(e) Public halls or exhibition halls
  • F1(f) Public worship or religious instruction (or in connection with such activity)
  • F1(g) Courts of law
• F2 Local community:
  
  • F2(a) Shops (mostly) selling essential goods, including food, where the shop's premises do not exceed 280 square metres and there is no other such facility within 1000 metres.
  • F2(b) Halls or meeting places for the principal use of the local community.
  • F2(c) Areas or places for outdoor sport or recreation (not involving motor vehicles or firearms).
  • F2(d) Indoor or outdoor swimming pools or skating rinks.

Sui Generis

"Sui generis" is a Latin term for "in a class of its own". In the UK planning system, certain uses are specifically defined and excluded from classification, therefore becoming "sui generis."

"If you think about a swimming pool with lanes as the [use] classes, you can swim up and down that lane as much as you like, within that class, but you can't jump between lanes without approval," Gooch said. With sui generis, "you're not even in the pool. You just have to stand in your spot unless you get permission to do something else".

Sui generis uses include:

• theatres
• amusement arcades/centres or funfairs
• launderettes
• fuel stations
• hiring, selling and/or displaying motor vehicles
• taxi businesses
• scrap yards, or a yard for the storage/distribution of minerals and/or the breaking of motor vehicles
• alkali work
• hostels (providing no significant element of care)
• waste disposal installations for the incineration, chemical treatment or landfill of hazardous waste
• retail warehouse clubs
• nightclubs
• casinos
• betting offices/shops
• payday loan shops
• public houses, wine bars or drinking establishments
• drinking establishments with expanded food provision
• hot food takeaways (for the sale of hot food where consumption of that food is mostly undertaken off the premises)
• venues for live music performance
• cinemas
• concert halls
• bingo halls
• dance halls

Pursuing a Planning Use Change

As previously mentioned, officials in England and Wales sought to simplify planning and cut red tape when they reduced the number of use classes in 2020.

But investors hoping to change the use of a property still may need to wait. There are 331 local planning authorities throughout England, each with the power to approve or deny projects within their jurisdiction. Traditionally, changing a planning use for a property took eight to 13 weeks, but a deluge of applications and staffing shortages in recent years have led to delays, Gooch said. Other restrictions, like Section 106 legal agreements that act as planning obligations negotiated by local authorities and developers, can further complicate planning use changes.

Another new frontier for developers is a keen focus on "embodied carbon" in new construction. New guidelines from London Mayor Sadiq Khan urge developers to rehab existing buildings instead of tearing them down and building anew, with the latter practice being a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Two projects have already been rejected in part over embodied carbon concerns: The planned demolition of Marks & Spencer's flagship store on London's Oxford Street and a proposed, glassy high-rise called The Tulip.

Currently, only London has embodied carbon guidelines, which are not part of national policy. But that could soon change, Gooch said.

"People are going to have to start to think a lot more carefully about factoring in the amount of carbon that's already gone into a building that they're proposing to demolish," Gooch said. "Now there will be situations where it's still worth knocking it down, but it probably should be given greater thought than it has historically in the UK planning system."

For more resources on UK planning, check out the National Planning Policy Framework and National Planning Policy Guidance.