Class R permitted development lets an agricultural building change to a flexible commercial use, storage, offices, shops, cafes, hotels, light industry, outdoor sport and recreation among them, without a planning application, within a floorspace cap per agricultural unit and with a notification to the authority below a threshold and a prior approval above it. Permitted development agricultural buildings under class R is the route a developer reads on a barn that will not make dwellings: too close to the working yard, on a holding that has spent its class Q headroom, or in a location the authority would call impractical for a home but not for a workshop. The use is flexible in that the building may move between the uses the class names without a further application, and the record of which use was begun and when is what the developer keeps. This page sets out class R as the developer reads it, and how it sits beside class Q on the same holding.
The uses the class opens, and the flexibility
The class allows a change to a set of uses the order names, and once the building has changed it may move between those uses without further permission, which is what makes it a flexible commercial use rather than a change to one use. The developer who reads a barn for a workshop today and a farm shop next year is reading class R; the building must have been in agricultural use on the qualifying date the class names, the same condition as class Q, and the holding's history decides it.
The floorspace cap and the two thresholds
The class caps the floorspace changed per agricultural unit, and it splits the procedure by size: below a threshold the developer notifies the authority of the date the use begins and the use proposed, and above it applies for prior approval on transport, noise, contamination and flooding. Reading the floorspace against the cap and the threshold is the first arithmetic on a class R barn, and the class Q sheet on this site reads a barn's floorspace against the dwelling caps for the other route; the order cited below states the class R figures and the date they changed.
Class R beside class Q, and what the file keeps
A holding may use both classes, and the floorspace each takes is counted against its own cap, but a building that has changed under class R has left agricultural use and cannot then be read under class Q as if it had not. The order of readings on a holding therefore matters, and a developer who converts the wrong barn first closes a route on the better one. Curtilo Pro keeps each reading against the building and the holding with the date, so the class R notification and the class Q prior approval on the same unit are read from one file rather than two memories.
Questions people ask about class r permitted development
What is the difference between class Q and class R?
Class Q makes dwellings, subject to prior approval, within caps on dwellings and floorspace; class R makes flexible commercial uses within a floorspace cap, by notification below a threshold and prior approval above it. Both need agricultural use on the qualifying date.
Does class R need prior approval?
Only above the floorspace threshold the order sets; below it the developer notifies the authority of the date and the use. Either way the building must qualify, and a change begun without the notification is a breach.
Can a class R building be extended?
Not under class R, which is a change of use only. Building operations need their own right or an application, and a building changed under class R may then be read under the commercial classes for what those allow.
Sources
- legislation.gov.uk, GPDO 2015 Schedule 2 Part 3: changes of use, including class Q (agricultural buildings to dwellinghouses) and class R (agricultural buildings to flexible commercial use)
- GOV.UK planning practice guidance, When is permission required: development, permitted development rights, prior approval and article 4 directions
- legislation.gov.uk, GPDO 2015 Schedule 2 Part 6: agricultural and forestry development, the five-hectare classes and the prior notification