Class E – How it’s going in practice?

The study of town centres and improving their vitality has been always a source of interest to me, and a large factor in drawing me to the planning profession. Having undertaken my university dissertation on town centre policy and its flexibility, the announcement of the introduction of Class E has put into practice a great deal of what I was setting out to achieve through my university research.

Last week, I delivered a presentation to my colleagues on just how we have seen Class E provide an opportunity to us as a consultancy, whilst also presenting as much of a challenge.

Firstly, I believe it is important to recall exactly why Class E was introduced. The Explanatory Memorandum, published in September 2020, ahead of its inception stated that:

“This new class allows for a mix of uses to reflect changing retail and business models…It therefore, recognises that a building may be in a number of uses concurrently or that a building may be used for different uses at different times of the day … Bringing these uses together and allowing movement between them will give businesses greater freedom to adapt to changing circumstances and to respond more quickly to the needs of their communities".

Indeed, with the ever-growing challenges faced by town centres – including continuous growth of online retail, and the challenges presented by COVID limiting our ability to get out over the last two years – there has never been a greater need to allow for movement and collaboration of uses. We need to ensure that sites are not lying vacant, and that town centre vibrancy is retained as much as possible.

What we have found since Class E’s inception is a demonstrable increase in flexibility of Town Centre Policy at Local Plan level – this is supported by a growing trend of LPAs in recent years attempting to embrace a more flexible approach to town centre planning policy. These measures include:

• Less restrictive, or entire removal of, percentage requirements for floorspace on retail frontages; and
• Less extensive marketing requirements for vacant units.

We can see that LPAs have taken the opportunity to place the above approaches into practice. For example, this is taken from the Barnet Local Plan (Adopted 2012) existing policy for ‘Development Principles for Barnet’s Town Centres’

“Change from a retail use (Class A1) will be strongly resisted unless it can be demonstrated that there is no viable demand for continued Class A1 use. When it can be demonstrated that the site has been marketed effectively for Class A1 use acceptable alternatives to Class A1 use will be Class A2, A3, A4, A5 or community uses”.

And this is their emerging policy, submitted for examination in November 2021:

“Council expects a suitable mix of appropriate uses to respond to changing demands and support and boost their continued vitality and viability … Within the primary frontages of Major and District Town Centre, Local Centres and Parades the retail function is safeguarded as part of the Commercial, Business and Service Use Class”.

The difference in approach is very clear – the adopted policy almost resists a loss of direct retail to other town centre uses, which can also be vital to attracting people to their town centre. The emerging policy clearly places greater emphasis on the fact that a town centre needs more than just the historic Class A1 use to improve its vitality. This change in approach has, I believe, been the critical opportunity that Class E has provided – perhaps almost an entire shift in mindset for LPAs nationwide.