It has been announced that 17 local authorities have won governmental exemption in order to prevent vacant commercial property to be converted into residential housing.
This means that such councils will be able to opt out of the changes, known as the Town and Country Planning Act, which aims to change vacant office space into housing without any planning permission needed, in order to cope with the major housing shortage faced in the UK in recent years.
Most of the local authorities are actually in London and the south east of England. The councils that have won exemption in the capital city are the City of London, Camden, Islington, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Southwark, Lambeth, Wandsworth, Westminster, Newham, and Kensington and Chelsea. The other councils are Vale of the White Horse, Stevenage, Ashford (Kent), Sevenoaks and East Hampshire, and Manchester City Council.
The London boroughs are particularly important as existing large plans for West London may now be scrapped altogether.
Communities secretary Eric Pickles slammed the exemptions by fully backing the scheme. Mr Pickles said: “There is huge untapped potential in the many disused existing buildings we have and we’re determined that every one of them is put to good use.
“We’re providing a great opportunity for outdated, redundant or underused offices to be brought back to life by converting them into homes, protecting the green belt and countryside at the same time. This will also increase footfall and provide knock-on benefits to the wider community."
Unused buildings will also be converted into new free schools under new development rights, which will change the use of such sites.
Mr Pickles did suggest however that the coalition government did understand why some councils had exempted from the legislation due to financial reasons.