Planning permission to convert a house into flats
Subdivision is always a planning matter — and quality of the resulting homes, not the principle, is where schemes fail.
Do you need planning permission to convert a house into flats?
Subdivision is always a planning matter — and quality of the resulting homes, not the principle, is where schemes fail.
No shortcut here: subdivision needs permission
Converting a single dwellinghouse into two or more separate homes is a material change of use, and there are no householder permitted development rights for it. Every conversion is a planning application, decided against housing and design policy.
The quality bar is where conversions fail
The principle of conversion is usually supported — national policy promotes making effective use of existing buildings to meet housing need. The refusals come on quality: undersized rooms, poor outlook and light, missing amenity space, unresolved bins and cycle storage. In London, the London Plan sets the standards explicitly.
“Housing development should be of high quality design and provide adequately-sized rooms (see Table 3.1) with comfortable and functional layouts which are fit for purpose and meet the needs of Londoners”London Plan Policy D6 · full text in the library → · official source →
Design the flats to the standards first
Space standards, layouts and amenity are checkable before you apply. A conversion designed to the published standards argues for itself; one designed to maximise units and argued down afterwards rarely survives.
See it in a complete case study
In our Greenwich example, 207 of 267 decided change-of-use applications within 1 km were approved — 78%.
General guidance ends where your address begins
A Planning Policy report reads the designations on your exact property, applies the policies above and your council’s own Local Plan to your project, and shows what decided applications nearby reveal — every quote verified against its source.