Bournemouth Borough Council: Darryl Howells has secured a Certificate of Lawfulness for a Proposed Use or Development (CLOPUD) for the conversion of a hotel (Use Class C1) to a suite of 14 serviced holiday apartments. Each apartment would comprise a lounge, kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom.  The CLOPUD confirms that the proposed use of the building also falls within Use Class C1 and therefore no material change of use of the building would occur.

Prior to the client’s instruction, Jon Harrison of Harriplan drew up the plans and submitted a planning application for the proposed change of use, however received resistance from the planning officer at the point of validation as in the Council’s opinion the planning application documentation was incomplete. At this time Harriplan recommended Pure Town Planning’s involvement to the client, to resolve the issue and get the application validated.

Darryl reviewed the planning submission and case law, and wrote a supporting correspondence to the planning application advising that, in his opinion, there would be no material change of use of the building. Evidence confirmed that the resultant use of the building from a hotel (Use Class C1) to 14 serviced holiday apartments fell within the same Use Class. The arguments that Darryl submitted were that whilst each apartment was self-contained, there would still be shared facilities namely lounge area for drinks; a kitchen operated by staff; a reception with 24-hour concierge service; and the cleaning duties of the serviced apartments and laundry service will be carried out by hotel staff. Such activities retained the building as a C1 use and did not fall within either Use Class C3 or Sui Generis as being advocated by Bournemouth Borough Council.

The Local Planning Authority was persuaded by Darryl’s opinion and the change of use application was withdrawn.  Subsequently Darryl submitted an application for the CLOPUD which was approved quickly and without delay by the LPA.

If you have a tricky planning problem then please get in touch with Pure Town Planning before making your submission – you have nothing to lose by making use of our free consultation service and it could well save you time and money!