A Class MA boundary error has defeated a proposal to convert commercial space into 14 flats at Friars House, East Street, Chichester. Planning Inspector John Pearce dismissed appeal 6009623 on 23rd October 2026 because the site plan left the building’s external walls and windows outside the application boundary.
The scheme, promoted by PPR Chichwin Limited, sought prior approval to change Class E commercial accommodation to Class C3 homes. The red line included both pedestrian and vehicle access, but the Inspector found that the exterior fabric was indispensable to the intended residential use. That was enough for the appeal to fail under the procedural requirements of the General Permitted Development Order (GPDO).
I think this is a useful warning for anyone looking at a conversion within an existing building. A Class MA boundary can appear meticulous when it captures the rooms and access routes, yet still omit physical parts of the building that the homes will necessarily rely upon. The decision turns on the particulars of this plan, not a new blanket restriction on commercial conversions.
Why the Class MA boundary failed
Class MA of Schedule 2, Part 3 of the GPDO permits certain changes from Class E commercial, business or service use to Class C3 dwellinghouses, provided the relevant limitations and conditions are satisfied. It is a permitted development route, but it requires a prior approval application. That application must meet the separate procedural provisions of Paragraph W.
Paragraph W(2)(b) requires a plan indicating the site and showing the proposed development. The Inspector applied the national Planning Practice Guidance on location plans, which says a red line should enclose the land needed to carry out the proposal. In practice, that means asking what is part of the development, not just which rooms will receive new internal layouts.
The Class MA boundary question in Chichester was unusually specific. The parties accepted that the first and second floors were in qualifying commercial use. The building also included commercial accommodation at street level, and its East Street frontage rose to three storeys, with a two-storey section behind. The Inspector did not dismiss the appeal because Class E use had not been demonstrated for those upper floors.
The site plan included access but excluded exterior walls
The appeal plan showed pedestrian access from East Street and vehicle access from St John’s Street. It also included the building interior. The difficulty was that the red line ran inside the outer skin, excluding both the external walls and the windows fitted within them.
The Inspector’s reasoning was practical. The external walls enclose the building and would continue to be required for people to live in the proposed flats. Residents would also use the existing windows as part of that residential occupation. Those are necessary elements of the proposed change of use, even if the bulk of the work takes place indoors.
That made the Class MA boundary defective in this particular case: land and parts of the building essential to the development had not been incorporated into the site shown for the application. Inspector Pearce concluded that the proposal therefore failed Paragraph W(2)(b), so it could not benefit from Class MA on the submitted basis.
This should not be confused with a finding that changing the use automatically authorises external construction work. Including the relevant building fabric in the application boundary identifies the land and building to which the change of use relates. Whether alterations to windows or walls need a separate permission is a different question.
Why additional legal advice did not save the appeal
The appellant supplied legal advice during the appeal. The Inspector considered the 2026 Planning Appeals procedural guidance, the Wheatcroft principles and the approach to amendments in Holborn Studios Ltd v London Borough of Hackney (2018). He accepted the additional material because it did not fundamentally change the scheme considered by the council and the council had an opportunity to respond.
That procedural decision should not be mistaken for success on the merits. Receiving and considering legal submissions did not alter the Inspector’s conclusion that the plan omitted essential parts of the building. The Class MA boundary remained the decisive problem.
There is an important distinction here. An Inspector may be willing to consider further evidence without permitting an applicant to recast the development into a different scheme. But acceptance of evidence does not create a permitted development right where a statutory requirement has not been met.
The scheduled monument issue remains undecided
A separate dispute concerned whether the building or its curtilage was covered by scheduled monument restrictions. The Inspector expressly declined to decide that question because the defective plan already required dismissal. It would therefore be wrong to report this case as establishing that Friars House was, or was not, eligible under the scheduled monument provisions.
The appeal also says nothing decisive about the acceptability of 14 homes on design, amenity or housing policy grounds. The refusal was concerned with eligibility for this specific permitted development route on the application as presented, not a comprehensive merits judgement on a full planning application.
For a Class MA boundary review, unresolved constraints remain important. Correcting the red line would not, by itself, prove that every other Class MA limitation or prior approval matter had been satisfied. Those matters would still need a proper assessment in any further application.
What applicants should check before a Class MA submission
Before committing to drawings and specialist reports, check the precise existing lawful use of every area to be converted. A building can have more than one use, and the fact that part of it is Class E does not automatically bring the whole property within Class MA. Planning Geek’s Class MA guide explains the wider eligibility rules and limits of prior approval.
Then compare the proposal with the red line, floor plans, access arrangements and the fabric of the existing building. For a Class MA boundary, ask whether excluding part of the structure leaves the site definition short of what the development necessarily uses. Cross-check the site plan against the wording of Paragraph W before submission, rather than treating the red line as a purely administrative detail.
Where the applicant controls only part of a mixed-use or multi-occupier property, that exercise deserves particular care. Ownership, rights of access, the scope of an existing tenancy and the extent of the site shown in a prior approval application are related questions, but they are not interchangeable. The Chichester decision concerned the statutory sufficiency of the submitted plan, not a finding about title to the external walls.
The official case record is Planning Inspectorate appeal 6009623, decided on 23rd October 2026, following Chichester District Council application CC/25/02863/PA3MA. The appeal decision is also available on AppealBase.
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