If the council has refused your Class MA prior-approval application, you can appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. You shouldn’t appeal automatically. The best course depends on exactly why the council refused it, whether that reason stands up to scrutiny and whether the problem can be dealt with more effectively through a fresh application.
The council may have misunderstood the evidence, applied the wrong Class MA test or taken an unreasonable view on matters such as natural light, noise, flooding or access. Those decisions may be open to challenge. If important evidence was missing, or the plans rely on work that Class MA does not cover, correcting the application and submitting it again will usually make more sense.
This article looks at the issues that arise specifically with Class MA. Our separate guide examines the wider question of whether to appeal or reapply after a planning refusal. If your change of use was refused as a full planning application rather than under Class MA, see our guide to appealing a refused change of use to residential.
What is Class MA?
Class E describes the existing use of the building. It covers many shops, offices, restaurants, clinics, gyms and light industrial premises.
Class MA is a permitted development right that allows a qualifying Class E building to change to residential use, known as Class C3. Although it is permitted development, you must apply to the council for prior approval before carrying out the change of use.
The council checks whether the building qualifies and considers a limited range of planning matters. It cannot treat the proposal as if it were a full planning application.
Some older online guides say that Class MA only applies to buildings below 1,500 square metres or that the premises must have been vacant for at least three months. Both restrictions were removed in March 2024.
The two-year use requirement remains. You must show that the building has been in a qualifying Class E use, or one of the relevant former use classes, for a continuous period of at least two years before the prior-approval application.
Class MA is unavailable for listed buildings and certain protected sites. An Article 4 direction may also have removed the right from a particular town centre, shopping parade or employment area. Occasionally, a condition on an earlier planning permission will prevent the building from benefiting from permitted development rights.
Article 4 directions deserve particular care. A council can use one to withdraw the Class MA right in a defined area, and many did so quickly and broadly when the right was introduced. The government then pressed authorities to keep them to the smallest area genuinely justified, and a number were redrawn, so you now find Article 4 directions applied very tightly, sometimes to a short row of shops or even a single building while its neighbours are unaffected. Do not go on a general impression of the area. Bring up the council’s Article 4 map, zoom in on the actual building, and check whether the right has been removed before you rely on Class MA at all.
The proposed homes must comply with the applicable national space standards. Although 37 square metres is the absolute minimum, larger flats will usually require more space depending on their number of bedrooms and intended occupants. Our guide to planning refusals based on space standards explains the requirements in more detail.
What can the council consider?
The council can consider transport and safe access, contamination, flooding, noise from nearby commercial premises and whether every habitable room would receive adequate natural light.
Further considerations apply in particular circumstances. These include the effect of a ground-floor residential conversion in a conservation area, introducing homes into an important industrial or storage area, the impact on local services where a registered nursery or an NHS health centre would be lost, and fire safety in qualifying high-rise buildings.
The council is not entitled to introduce the full range of policies it could consider on a full planning application. It cannot refuse Class MA prior approval simply because it would prefer the premises to remain a shop or office.
The decision notice may give only a brief explanation of the refusal. The planning officer’s report will usually reveal much more about how the decision was reached. Read the two together, along with the plans and reports submitted with the application. Our guide to understanding a planning refusal explains where to find the useful information.
The council says the Class E use was not proved
A common reason for refusal is that the applicant has not demonstrated the building’s use history.
It may seem obvious that the premises were used as a shop or office, but the council needs evidence of the planning use and the required two-year period. Depending on the building, that evidence might come from its planning history, leases, dated photographs, business records or statutory declarations. Business-rates records can help, although they may not establish the precise planning use on their own.
If the necessary evidence exists but was never submitted, prepare it and make another Class MA application. Under the current appeal procedure, you will not normally be allowed to produce it for the first time at appeal.
There may be grounds for appealing if good evidence was submitted and the council misunderstood it. The officer may have overlooked part of the planning history, used the wrong dates or wrongly concluded that a former use did not fall within Class E. An inspector can reconsider the information that was before the council.
If the building has not genuinely been in a qualifying use for two years, another immediate Class MA application will not solve the problem. You may need to wait until the requirement is met or make a full planning application instead.
The plans include external alterations
Class MA grants permission for the change of use. It does not grant permission for building work that amounts to external development.
New windows, doors or rooflights, an extension, changes to the façade or external plant may need separate planning permission. Internal alterations that do not amount to development are treated differently.
This can cause difficulties where the proposed flats depend on new windows to provide natural light. The council may conclude that the scheme cannot be carried out under Class MA alone. An inspector dealing with a Class MA appeal cannot grant planning permission for external works that fall outside the permitted development right.
You may be able to revise the Class MA plans and apply separately for the external works. In other cases, a full planning application covering the whole conversion will be more sensible. The government’s guidance on changes of use and building operations explains the general position.
An appeal could still be justified if the council has mistaken an existing feature for a proposed alteration or has treated internal work as external development. Much will depend on how clearly the submitted drawings distinguish between the existing and proposed building.
A flood risk assessment was missing
Flooding is one of the matters the council is required to consider under Class MA.
A building is not automatically disqualified because it is in an area at risk of flooding. The application must give the council enough information to decide whether the proposed homes would be safe.
Applications in areas of flood risk will normally need a site-specific flood risk assessment. This is particularly relevant in Flood Zones 2 and 3, although surface-water flooding and other sources of risk may also need to be considered. The assessment should deal with present and future risk, the safety of the occupants and any necessary protection or mitigation.
If no adequate assessment accompanied the application, it will usually be better to obtain one and reapply. A statement that the building has never flooded is unlikely to be enough.
Where a proper assessment was submitted and the council has taken an unreasonable view of the risk or the proposed mitigation, an appeal may be appropriate. The government provides further guidance on flood risk and prior-approval applications.
The council has refused over natural light, noise or access
These refusals tend to involve more judgement.
A council may say that a bedroom would receive inadequate natural light even though the application included a daylight assessment supporting the layout. It may reject the conclusions of an acoustic report or decide that the proposed access would be unsafe despite the submitted transport evidence.
An inspector can reach a different conclusion on the same material. If the reports and plans already answer the council’s concern, an appeal may provide a sensible way forward.
Look closely at what the documents cover. If the daylight report did not assess the disputed room, the noise report ignored a neighbouring workshop or the transport information failed to deal with the access, the appeal will inherit those weaknesses.
The same applies to the layout. A flat that fails the required space standard, or a bedroom that needs another window before it can receive adequate natural light, will normally require revised plans. An inspector cannot waive the Class MA requirements because the rest of the conversion is acceptable.
Has the council applied the wrong planning test?
A Class MA refusal can sometimes stray into matters that belong to a full planning application.
For example, the officer may object to the loss of employment space or argue that a vacant shop should be retained for retail purposes. Those may be relevant considerations under local planning policy, but they are not separate prior-approval tests under Class MA.
Local policies can still help the council assess something that Class MA allows it to consider. A highways policy may inform its view of the transport effects, for example. The council cannot use that as a route to reconsider every aspect of the development.
If the refusal relies on a matter outside the Class MA rules, there may be good grounds for an appeal. The inspector will consider the application afresh and decide whether the building qualifies and whether the relevant prior-approval matters have been dealt with satisfactorily.
The inspector is not limited to repeating the council’s assessment of the stated refusal reason. Eligibility and the other applicable Class MA requirements may also be considered, so the whole application should be checked before an appeal is made.
Can you submit new information at appeal?
For applications made on or after 1 April 2026, a Class MA refusal will normally be dealt with under the Part 1 written-representations procedure.
The inspector generally works from the information that was before the council. New reports, revised drawings and evidence that should have accompanied the application will normally be disregarded.
This is why missing evidence of the Class E use, an absent flood risk assessment or a layout that needs altering will usually require another application. Applications made on or before 31 March 2026 follow the earlier appeal procedure.
How long do you have to appeal?
A Class MA prior-approval appeal must normally reach the Planning Inspectorate within six months of the date on the decision notice.
Enforcement action can reduce the appeal period, sometimes to only 28 days. Check the dates as soon as you receive the refusal rather than assuming the full six months will be available. The government’s planning appeal deadline guidance explains the exceptions.
Would you like us to look at the refusal?
Send us the decision notice and planning application reference. We can review the council’s reasons and the information already submitted, then tell you whether the existing application supports an appeal or whether the problem should be dealt with through another application.
My Planning Appeal offers a fixed £399 service for suitable smaller Part 1 appeals involving a limited number of issues. We screen cases before accepting them, and we win more than half of the appeals we take on. If the existing application is not strong enough to support an appeal, we will say so.