Call for council to speed up action that can stop unwanted office space loss

Concerns have been raised that the council is not acting fast enough to prevent further unwanted loss of office space in the future.

This comes off the back of an appeal which concluded earlier this month – the result is that offices will be turned over to new flats, against the council’s will.

It has given rise to fears the borough is not meeting its own ambition to protect employment space in the borough.

Mattel House, an office block in Vanwall Business Park, is set to be turned into flats – now the developer, Bellway Homes, has won its appeal against the borough.

The borough was unable to demonstrate that adverse impacts from the application, including the loss of an employment site, ‘would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits’.

But when the application was previously under discussion, councillors of the former administration made it very clear that they considered the loss of this office space to be less than ideal.

Maidonian Andrew Hill has raised questions around the process, saying the borough ‘wasted time’ in bringing in a key policy that ‘could have potentially prevented the loss of employment sites.’

Across the UK, companies are allowed to convert offices into flats under something called permitted development rights (PDR), introduced in 2013.

To combat this, local authorities can put in what is known as an ‘Article 4’ direction to protect employment land.

In 2019 Windsor and Maidenhead council was ‘in the process’ of implementing Article 4 to protect office space across the borough.

In a report commissioned by the council, its advisers observed that green space could be lost if the borough didn’t protect its existing employment space.

“The council is reaching a point where further losses of stock would necessitate the allocation of new, greenfield and likely out-of-centre locations to replace them,” they wrote.

The matter arose again in 2022, when the independent inspector examining the Borough Local Plan (BLP) saw statements saying the council ‘intended’ to enact Article 4 protections.

Mr Hill questioned why the council did not ‘urgently’ employ these powers.

“They said this was in progress in 2019. But they did nothing throughout 2022. They wasted time,” he said.

“This is solvable – the problem they face is how many other companies are going to put in applications [like this] in the meantime.”

Councillor Adam Bermange, cabinet member for planning, said: “Recognising that the loss of suitable office sites cannot be sustained in the long-term, the Borough Local Plan states that the council intends to introduce ‘Article 4 Directions’, which would withdraw permitted development rights, and this remains very much the case.

“If the council proceeds, a formal process would need to be followed carefully to remove the risk of legal and compensation claims.

“This is not a quick process and includes the assembly of robust evidence, consultation with affected landowners and others, and satisfying the Government that the proposal is justified.

“It is important to recognise that an ‘Article 4 Direction’ does not stop conversions of offices to residential, it just ensures that developers need to obtain express planning permission instead.

“In the case of Mattel House, the appellant had already secured a prior approval permission under [PDR] to convert the existing building to 28 residential units – the subject matter of the appeal was their planning application seeking express consent for a full redevelopment of the site for 91 flats.”