A former bank is one of the most flexible buildings on a high street and one of the most expensive to convert. It sits in Class E, so you can change to almost any other commercial use with no planning application at all, and Class MA gives a permitted development route to residential. What stops schemes is rarely planning policy. It is natural light, and a reinforced concrete vault.
Within Class E you can move to retail, a café or restaurant, offices, a gym, a clinic, a nursery or indoor sport with no planning application at all. That flexibility is most of why former branches let well.
Class MA, with prior approval limited to seven matters, a 56-day determination and deemed consent if the council misses it. We check whether it is actually available on the specific address.
The vault, the floor loading, natural light at the rear, and whether separate access to the upper floors exists or has to be built out of your frontage.
Our fee is paid by the landlord or the vendor. No fee to you at any stage.
Whether you are trading from it, holding it or converting it changes which units are worth your time entirely. A unit that works as a clinic may be hopeless as flats.
Lawful use, listed status, Article 4 position, natural light, the vault, upper floor access and the current rateable value — before you view.
The letting or purchase, and where the plan is residential, the prior approval application and the evidence it will actually turn on.
Banks and financial services moved from the old Class A2 into Class E(c) on 1 September 2020. Class E is a single broad use class, and movement within it is not development at all — so a former branch can become a shop, a café or restaurant, offices, a gym, a clinic or health centre, a nursery or an indoor sports facility without any planning application.
That is worth real money and it is the main reason former branches let quickly despite their quirks. It is also worth checking rather than assuming: the use has to be lawfully established, and an Article 4 direction can restrict movement within Class E in some locations.
Class MA permits conversion from Class E to residential subject to prior approval. The building must have been in lawful Class E use for a continuous two years before the application. The two conditions that used to catch people — a 1,500 square metre floorspace cap and a three-month vacancy requirement — were both removed on 5 March 2024, so neither size nor occupation is a barrier any more.
Prior approval is limited to seven matters: transport and highways, contamination, flooding, noise from existing commercial uses, adequacy of natural light in habitable rooms, fire safety where the building is 18 metres or seven storeys and creates two or more dwellings, and conservation area character for ground floor conversions. Councils cannot refuse on design, housing mix, affordable housing or loss of employment floorspace. They have 56 days, and consent is deemed granted if they miss it.
The vault is the one people underestimate. It is reinforced concrete, often with a steel door frame cast into the structure, and removing it is a demolition operation inside a building you cannot easily get plant into — not a strip-out. Sometimes the right answer is to design around it rather than remove it.
Then: floor loading engineered for the vault, which is a gift if you want heavy plant and irrelevant otherwise; natural light at the rear, which is usually the binding constraint on any residential scheme; and separate access to the upper floors, which frequently does not exist. Creating it normally means taking a slice of the frontage, which is the most valuable part of the ground floor. Add security glazing, bandit screens and legacy alarm and CCTV infrastructure to the strip-out.
Check too whether an ATM wayleave or lease survives the transaction. They often do, and they can constrain the frontage you were planning to open up.
Banks disposing of branches routinely impose restrictive covenants on future use — most commonly barring occupation by another bank or financial institution, and sometimes by payday lenders or betting shops. Depending on what you intend, that is either irrelevant or fatal. It is a five-minute check that occasionally saves an entire acquisition, so do it before you price the building rather than at report on title.
Within Class E, yes. A former bank sits in Class E(c), and moving to another Class E use — retail, café or restaurant, offices, gym, clinic, nursery or indoor sport — is not development and needs no application. Two caveats: the existing use has to be lawfully established, and an Article 4 direction can restrict movement within Class E in some areas. We check both on the specific address.
Often, through Class MA. You need two years of continuous lawful Class E use, and the old 1,500 square metre cap and three-month vacancy requirement were both removed in March 2024. It is not available on listed buildings, and an Article 4 direction can remove it. The real test is natural light, which is where most bank conversions fail.
Daylight. A banking hall is deep, with glazing at the front and frequently nothing usable at the back, and every habitable room has to receive adequate natural light. Combine that with the nationally described space standards — 37 square metres minimum for a one-bed, one-person flat — and the number of units a floorplate will actually take is usually well below the arithmetic. Test the light before you build the appraisal.
More than you expect, and it varies enormously with construction, access and what sits above it. It is reinforced concrete demolition in a constrained space, so the cost is driven by access and structural support rather than by volume. We will get you a real figure from a contractor before you commit, and on some schemes the better answer is to design around it and use it for plant or storage.
No. Our fee is paid by the landlord or the vendor. What that buys you is someone checking the Article 4 position, the listed status and the daylight before you spend money on an appraisal that was never going to work.
