Guides
Working notes, not content marketing
These are the notes we use ourselves when reading a Class E building. Everything statutory is quoted from the live text on legislation.gov.uk as at 30/08/2026, and where a paragraph has been removed we say so rather than repeating a test that no longer exists.
Guide 01
What the 2024 amendment actually removed
On 05/03/2024 the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) Order 2024 (S.I. 2024/141) took two paragraphs out of Class MA. A great deal of advice written before that date is still circulating, and it is wrong in the two places that matter most commercially.
MA.1(1)(a) — omitted
Vacancy: has the building been vacant for three months?
MA.1(1)(a) was omitted on 05/03/2024 by the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) Order 2024 (S.I. 2024/141), arts. 1(1), 3(2)(a). The three-month continuous vacancy requirement no longer exists. On legislation.gov.uk the paragraph now reads only as a line of dots. This is not a test and cannot fail a site.
MA.1(1)(c) — omitted
Floorspace: is the building under 1,500 sq m?
MA.1(1)(c) was omitted on 05/03/2024 by S.I. 2024/141, arts. 1(1), 3(2)(b). The 1,500 sq m cumulative floorspace cap no longer exists. Floor area is recorded on this page for information only, not as a limit, and cannot fail a site.
What this changes in practice
A trading shop with a sitting occupier is now capable of being a Class MA site. So is a 4,000 sq m office block. Before March 2024 neither was. If you have been screening buildings out on vacancy or floor area, the screen is out of date and it has been excluding the larger end of the opportunity for two years.
What did not change: the two-year continuous qualifying use test in MA.1(1)(b), every other bar in MA.1, and all nine prior-approval matters in MA.2(2). Removing two bars did not make Class MA permissive.
Guide 02
The two-year use test, and how it is really evidenced
This is the test that fails the most sites, and it fails them late — usually after a buyer has exchanged on a price that assumed prior approval was a formality. The words are these:
“unless the use of the building fell within one or more of the classes specified in sub-paragraph (2) for a continuous period of at least 2 years prior to the date of the application for prior approval;”
Four things in that wording do the work:
- the use of the building — not the occupier, not the trade, not the sign over the door
- one or more of the classes specified — the two years can be made up across several qualifying classes
- a continuous period of at least 2 years — a gap breaks it, and a break resets the clock
- prior to the date of the application — the two years runs to the application date, not to the date you buy or the date you enquire
What a real evidence pack contains
- Business rates records for the full two-year period, showing the rated use and no gap in liability that indicates a change of use
- Leases, licences or tenancy at will agreements covering the whole period, with the permitted use clause read (not assumed)
- Rent demands and rent receipts, which evidence occupation as well as the agreement
- Utility accounts and consumption data in the occupier's name
- VAT registration or trading records tying the business to the address
- Accounts, staff records, or insurance schedules naming the address
- Photographs, signage, dated online listings and street-level imagery
- A statutory declaration from the occupier or agent, as support for documents, never instead of them
Where the chain usually breaks
- A fit-out period or refurbishment treated as continuous use, when the use itself had stopped
- A change of occupier that was also a change of use class part-way through the two years
- Business rates showing an empty rate period, which evidences the gap rather than covering it
- Ancillary use of part of a building assumed to carry the whole building
- A use that was lawful in fact but never lawful in planning terms
- Counting the two years to the wrong date — it runs to the date of the prior approval application
If the chain is short
A building three months short of two years is not a dead site, it is an early one. The commercial question becomes whether you can control it — an option, a conditional contract, a long stop date — until the date the two years completes. The checker will work out that date from a start date if you give it one.
Guide 03
Natural light, and why deep-plan buildings fail
“the provision of adequate natural light in all habitable rooms of the dwellinghouses;”
Two words carry the refusals: all and habitable. Not most rooms. Not the living rooms. A habitable room with no window at all is not capable of satisfying the matter, and a plan that puts bedrooms in the middle of a deep floorplate is the most common reason a Class MA prior approval is refused on a building that otherwise qualifies.
This is a design problem, and it is solvable at design stage far more cheaply than at appeal: fewer, better units instead of more, worse ones; a lightwell or courtyard where the structure allows; rooms that are not habitable rooms placed in the dark centre.
Note the boundary. New window openings, lightwells and external alterations are building operations. Class MA permits a change of use and nothing else, so those works need their own permission even where prior approval is granted.
Guide 04
The fire risk condition, in the actual words
“Development meets the fire risk condition referred to in paragraph MA.2(2)(i) if the development relates to a building which will— (a) contain two or more dwellinghouses; and (b) satisfy the height condition in paragraph (3), read with paragraph (7), of article 9A (fire statements) of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015.”
Both limbs have to be met. Two or more dwellinghouses and the article 9A height condition — 18 m or more in height, or 7 or more storeys. Below that, the condition is not met and the consultation does not arise. Above it, a fire safety design statement becomes a required part of the application and a statutory consultee is engaged, which is a programme item as much as a design one.
Since 27/01/2026 the consultee for that purpose is the Building Safety Regulator, which took over the function previously performed by the Health and Safety Executive. Anything that still names the HSE as the consultee is out of date.
Guide 05
Everything prior approval does not solve
A prior approval is a narrow instrument. These are the items that still sit on the critical path afterwards, and they are where conversion budgets actually go wrong.
- Class MA permits a change of use. Building operations — new openings, extensions, external alterations, a new roof form — are not permitted by it and need their own permission.
- Building Regulations apply in full, including Part B fire, Part O overheating, Part L, Part F ventilation and sound insulation between dwellings. A prior approval is not a building control approval.
- Nationally Described Space Standard: not a Class MA prior-approval matter in itself, but a live constraint on unit layouts and, in some authorities, on what is treated as adequate.
- Community Infrastructure Levy is chargeable on qualifying floorspace. Existing floorspace relief depends on lawful use in the preceding period and is claimed on the correct forms, in the correct order, before commencement.
- Once converted, the building has no Part 1 permitted development rights: MA.2(6) locks the use to C3 and nothing else.
- Title and occupation: leases, break dates, vacant possession, lender consent and any restrictive covenant on residential use will decide whether a consent is deliverable.
- Prior approval does not resolve rights to light, party wall matters, or highway and service connections.