The Ruislip bingo appeal over a proposed 24-hour hall in a former bank has been dismissed because of late-night noise, but the Inspector rejected the council’s case that the use would harm the town centre.
The decision contains a wider planning-policy point. Parts of Hillingdon’s shopping-frontage policies were given very limited weight because they were adopted before Class E made many former retail, financial and commercial uses interchangeable without planning permission.
Class E changed the policy landscape
The appeal concerned the ground floor of 73 High Street, Ruislip, previously used as a bank within Class E. Sunni-Ed Limited wanted to change it to a bingo hall, a sui generis use requiring express planning permission.
Hillingdon relied principally on Policies DMTC2 and DMTC4 of its Local Plan Part 2, adopted in January 2020. Those policies seek to manage the mix of uses in primary and secondary shopping areas and were written around the former Use Classes Order.
Class E arrived later in 2020 and brought a wide range of commercial, business and service uses into a single use class. Within that class, many changes can take place without a planning application.
Inspector G Powys Jones said that, in the absence of an Article 4 Direction, the level of control sought by parts of DMTC4 and DMTC2 B(i) and B(ii) was no longer generally available. He therefore gave those parts of the policies very limited weight.
Planning Geek’s Use Class E guide explains the range of uses now grouped within the class.
Bingo was not the town-centre problem
The council had initially questioned whether the bingo hall should be regarded as a main town-centre use. After the parties were invited to comment on the 2026 National Planning Policy Framework, the council accepted that bingo is identified as a main town-centre use.
The Inspector also noted that the former bank was not a retail shop, so the proposal would not remove retail floorspace.
National policy did not suggest that a healthy town centre depended only on retail. A broader mix of uses could support vitality and viability, and a bingo hall was not inherently out of place in a town centre.
On that first main issue, the appellant won. The council had not demonstrated that the proposal would harm the vitality and viability of Ruislip Town Centre.
Why the Ruislip bingo appeal still failed
The difficulty was what would happen after the rest of the High Street quietened down.
The proposed bingo hall would operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No site-specific noise or acoustic assessment had been supplied. Instead, the appellant relied on studies from other London locations.
There are flats above the neighbouring property at 75 to 79 High Street. The appellant predicted around eight patrons an hour between noon and 8pm, falling to three an hour at other times.
The Inspector was not convinced. The proposal included 35 terminals, and he questioned why such a low predicted level of use required an all-night operation. In a suburban town centre where activity would normally fall away during the early hours, he considered there was a realistic prospect of customer comings and goings disturbing residents when they could reasonably expect to be sleeping.
A condition restricting opening hours might have addressed that concern. But the Inspector considered such a restriction would cut across the nature of the proposal and the appellant’s stated requirements, and the appellant had not suggested one.
The appeal was therefore dismissed on 18th September 2026 because of likely noise and disturbance to nearby residents.
For practitioners, the more durable point is the policy one. An older frontage policy does not disappear merely because Class E has changed the Use Classes Order, but the weight given to controls that assume planning permission is still needed for changes within today’s Class E can be sharply reduced.
Read the locally hosted appeal decision or see appeal 6011516 on the Planning Inspectorate service.
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