The impact of Covid has blurred the lines between home and work and many offices are likely to remain empty. So what to do with all those redundant office blocks?
It’s logical to look at the empty buildings in town and city centres or out on industrial parks and see an opportunity to tackle the long-running housing crisis across the country. There is even a mechanism in place to quickly and easily transform an office into residential homes.
First introduced in 2015, permitted development rights (PDR) were used to create 22,770 additional dwellings in 2021-22, with change of use on 10,303 properties across England. That included 8,359 cases where old
