The challenges of using office conversions as housing remedy
Shield House is just one example of “permitted development”. It is an outcome of a government experiment in deregulation, which allows homes to be made out of old offices and shops without planning permission, that has been going on for some years. An estimated 65,000 flats have been made in this way.
The Observer's architecture critic Rowan Moore highlights in his latest Guardian piece the failed outcome of a government program that seeks to speed up the conversion of old commercial properties into residential spaces.
"The experiment has been catastrophic in several significant respects, but the government has recently decided to double down on it, expanding their policy such that office blocks may now be replaced with entirely new buildings without permission," Moore writes. "This means that undersized and badly planned and located flats can now be realised at a larger scale," adding, "this is the famous definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results – applied, with devastating effects, to the places where people live."
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