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I am a volunteer member of management of a registered religious charity organisation in London. We bought a D1 property in November 2019 haven sold our existing property. The previous owner use the building for Hospices (i.e health related use). We have since taken ownership of the building, started internal alteration building work to create big halls and appropriate welfare facilities to support our worship and other religious activities.
As the property was bought as D1 there was no need for us as a religious organisation to apply for any usage permission then as the legislation permitted the use automatically, then.
My first question is: with us , a religious organisation been the owner of the property, what is the "Lawful use " of that property prior to the amendment of planning rules in September 2020? And what Use Class will the building have transitioned to under the new Rule?

Does the fact that we have not actually finished the internal alteration to allow active and functioning usage of the property for worshiping, before the new rule came into effect, really matter?

Please kindly advise on this as . we will appreciate your soonest advise on this. Thanks

Class D1 has been replaced with Class E or F.1.

Can you prove the works started prior to the transition?

Thank Damian,

Doing further checks of existing permission application on the property since it was build, we Found that the planning application put forward to allow the construction was " Erection of a Building for use as a resources Centre for administrative and counselling purposes (USE CLAss D1)" - This is as found on council planning portal. The permission was granted and the building was so constructed by the previous owner we bought from. The property has so been used for that use and there was no any other application to suggest that the previous owner applied to change the lawful use at any time.

So the question now is , Under the new rule, which category will a lawful use as " Resource center & counselling" falls?

Though the previous owner do have health related shops and outfits which they run in different properties but not in this one. Going by what you said here that it is not by the organisation/owner but the use, we think it is inappropriate for the use to be categories as Health.

Please kindly advise on this one.

As mentioned, Class D1 is now Class E or F.1. Copy and paste the link into your browser…

https://www.planninggeek.co.uk/use-class/