Given the current Coronavirus advice to work from home where possible, it is timely to look at the issues surrounding home-working and how potentially you might fall foul of planning rules running a business from your home. Undoubtably, the current lockdown has had a profound impact on all our lives and it is likely that long after the current restrictions are lifted, many people will decide they wish to continue to work from home and indeed many businesses may well encourage it as it will reduce their accommodation overheads.
However, there are a number of factors to consider if you decide to work from home or operate a business from your residence. Working from home is grey area in planning, various appeal decisions and court cases show a wide variety of interpretations of what level of ‘business use’ is considered acceptable without requiring planning permission.
The basic principle is that if the business use is considered to be incidental to the normal residential use then it doesn’t need planning permission. However, defining what constitutes an incidental use is open to interpretation and each case is judged on its own merits.
What to Consider
If you’re contemplating using your home to run a business, a good rule of thumb is to consider whether the use is likely to generate levels of noise, visitors, traffic, fumes or any other impact that goes above and beyond that which might usually be expected at a residential property. If it does, then planning permission will need to be sought from the Council.
In a similar vein, if the property needs external alteration to accommodate the use, or requires specialist machinery or equipment not normally found in a house, it’s highly likely that consent will be required. Getting planning permission to operate a business from your home is not easy and it will depend both on the nature of the use and if any of its effects might harm the amenities of local residents.
Business Use and Neighbours
Whether the neighbours complain about a use or activity is often a major factor and if they do complain this will alert the Council to the operation, who will then be obliged to investigate. If complaints are received, then it’s difficult to argue that the use causes no harm as it must have impacted on the amenities of the neighbours in make them complain. However, no complaints are received by the Council, then the use may well go undetected and unchallenged by the Local Planning Authority. It is worth noting that a use that takes place continuously for ten years becomes immune from enforcement action, so good relations with neighbours can be very beneficial.
Does a Home Office need Planning Permission?
Most people working from home do so from a home office where they work alone. This arrangement doesn’t generally need planning permission as it doesn’t generally involve visitors to the premises. Converting a room in your home to an office, or incorporating an office into the design of a new house, does not require planning permission as this is deemed incidental to the main use as a residence.
More intensive office use, such as occupying several rooms and perhaps involving staff coming to the house, is likely to cross the line into a mixed residential and office use.
Garden Offices
Office and other uses in detached outbuildings raise similar issues, the relationship to the main house and whether the outbuilding has its own separate access are considerations that may point to the use not being incidental to the primary residential use, and thus requiring consent.
Erecting a detached building in your garden under permitted development rights and it is acceptable to utilise this as a home office or workshop provided it used for purposes incidental to the house.
There is however a caveat here in that for this particular area of planning law, the definition of ‘incidental’ differs from the more common use of the word. For planning purposes, it excludes ‘primary accommodation’, namely bedrooms, livings rooms and, arguably, offices used for business purposes.
The position is far from clear because if you put up a building as permitted development and used it for a while for a hobby use, there would then be nothing stopping you changing it to an office under the normal ‘incidental’ use of garden buildings principle.
Studios & Workshops
Again, much depends on the characteristics of the use. An artist painting away in relative silence would have much less impact than say a sculptor working in metal or stone. But if the artist had a constant stream of visitors to their gallery then this might tip the balance. It really is a matter of facts and degree with no hard and fast rules and therefore it is often open to the interpretation of individuals.
Other Business Uses
Homes can also be utilised for a wide range of businesses, from childminding, surgeries and consulting rooms, health and beauty uses, guesthouses, kennels and catteries, through to vehicle repair uses, taxi uses and storage of vehicles.
The determining factors of whether planning permission is required are the scale of the operation relative to the domestic use and whether there are impacts not conducive with the residential use. As such childminding a few children or using one extra car as a taxi probably wouldn’t cross the line, but having a steady stream of visitors to a vehicle workshop in your garage almost certainly would. The same could also be said in relation to vehicle sales.
It should also be noted that hobby uses can also cross the line of what could reasonably be considered incidental to residential use. There are appeal cases involving the extensive storage of vehicles, which found that due to the harmful effects on neighbour’s amenities there had been a change of use needing consent. In other cases, dog owners with large numbers of animals in their gardens have fallen foul of the same principle.
Live/Work Units
Purpose-built live/work units allow the LPA to exercise control over the types of use and hours of operation, as well as the design and layout of the building. These controls may allow business uses which might be deemed inappropriate in a domestic residential home to be allowed in such units.
It is also worth noting for self-builders seeking plots, that a live work unit might overcome an LPA’s resistance to a new house in an area designated for employment use. I is however worth being aware that a live/work unit is a mixed use and so doesn’t enjoy the same permitted rights as a residential dwelling house.
So, is your home business permitted development?
For the majority of those working from home, planning permission isn’t an issue. It’s only when your business use starts to expand that you need to be aware a tipping point will be reached and you will need to seek planning approval.
Managing the development of your business to ensure that it does not encroach on neighbours amenities or create issues on the highway with access or parking gives you the best chance of securing permission, should you reach a point where you need to seek planning permission. It is therefore important to monitor this and be aware rather than just letting the expansion occur in an unmanaged fashion till it becomes a problem which causes the Council to become involved.
About Us
We are MPD Built Environment Consultants based in the North of England. We cover many locations including Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire, Merseyside and beyond. With over 30 year’s experience in all aspects of Planning, our team include Chartered Planners and Surveyors. We are members of RICS, RTPI, IHBC and various other bodies giving you confidence in the work we do.
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