Local Planning Bureaucracy

My company was looking to change our UK offices recently into larger more upscale premises and after looking at a dozen or so vacant spaces I found an ideal building and location- right in the town center with parking in a large enough space to host many employees.

In the USA, we started looking for a similar sized office at the same time, and had completed the process and received the keys in less than a month. The equivalent process in the UK from finding the right place to moving in was about three months. The steps that are needed such as negotiating a lease, redecorating the space and so on were the same in both cases, so why was the difference so great?

The problem was that the building in the UK we wanted to move into had been approved for professional and financial services use only when we needed permission for general office use. In order to get this permission, we needed to file a Planning Application to the local district council for so-called change of use. The planning application necessitated a lot of form filling, time delays and expense, requiring plans of the street and the space itself to be submitted for example, when these details were not really necessary for mere change of use. It was necessary to display a bright orange sign on the building door for 15 days so that the general public could give their opinion on the matter (and file objections, causing further delays).

Additionally, the permission to operate as a financial services business allowed the general public to enter the premises and conduct business, whereas general office use does not- in other words, we wanted less stringent operating procedures and not more, yet still needed to file for the same planning application process as we would have with a major construction work and development work.

The planning process was complicated further by the fact that there are multiple layers of local council bureaucracy to consider in our case- there is a Town Council as well as a District Council. So the town council's planning and highways committee looked at our application as well as the district council's planning and transport strategy department.

There is of course a process to go through and I wanted the space and submitted myself knowingly if unwillingly to the planning process. But there are some simplifications and streamlining that would make the whole thing go a lot quicker without any downside other than a few local councillors don't get to feel quite as important:

1. Exclude minor things like mere change of use from planning applications process or speed up the procedure such that for example no planning application sign is needed to be displayed for 15 days

2. Streamline the bureaucracy so that there are not multiple local councils to consult with

 
At the end of the day all I was trying to do was move into a vacant office space and conduct standard business from there at a time when many businesses were moving out of the town center and there were many vacant offices in the local area. You would have thought that we would be welcomed with open arms rather than with blank forms.


Author: Simon Buckingham

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