Not every commercial building sits in Class E. A drive-thru, a car showroom, a petrol station and a nightclub are sui generis — a class of one — and a school or a campus sits in Class F1. On those buildings the planning consent, not the floor area, is the asset. And the rates may not be set by comparing rents at all: on specialist premises the VOA can value on receipts and expenditure, which means your trading performance sets your rates bill.
Class E buildings move freely between shop, office, café, gym, clinic and nursery. Sui generis buildings move nowhere without a planning application. We read the decision notice and the conditions — hours, deliveries, hot food, external plant — because those bind you even when the class does not.
Most property is valued by comparing rents. Specialist premises may be valued on receipts and expenditure or on the contractor’s basis instead. That changes what you can argue on appeal and it means a strong trading year can raise your rates. We tell you which basis applies.
On a drive-thru, a trade counter or a showroom, the constraint is rarely the building. It is the access, the visibility splay, the servicing arrangement and the highways condition attached to the consent. We establish those before you view, not after you have paid for a feasibility study.
Our fee is paid by the landlord or the vendor. No fee to you, no retainer, and no incentive for us to talk you into a building whose consent does not permit what you intend.
What you actually do on the premises decides which use classes work, which conditions matter, and whether you need a licence on top. A specialist requirement described as a size and a budget will get you the wrong building.
Lawful use class, the conditions on the decision notice, any Article 4 direction, rateable value and the basis it was valued on, EPC and floor area, and the licensing position where one applies.
Where a change of use or a new consent is needed, that risk should sit in the deal — conditionality, a longer rent-free, a break tied to consent, or a reduced price. It is negotiable far more often than landlords suggest.
When shops, offices, restaurants, gyms, clinics, nurseries and light industrial were merged into Class E in September 2020, a group of uses was deliberately left outside it. Sui generis — of its own kind — covers pubs and drinking establishments, hot food takeaways, cinemas, live music venues, nightclubs, betting shops, pay day loan shops, launderettes, petrol filling stations, car showrooms, taxi businesses, scrap yards and waste facilities.
A sui generis building has no permitted flexibility at all. Every change of use is a planning application, judged on its merits, with no fallback. That cuts both ways and it is worth understanding which way it cuts for you. If you are the occupier and the consent already permits your use, you have a building nobody can easily convert away from you — scarcity value. If you are an investor, the second-hand market for the building is thin, and the alternative use value that normally floors a commercial valuation may simply not be there.
The 2020 reforms also created two classes that get far less attention than E. Class F1 covers learning and non-residential institutions: schools, colleges, campuses, museums, public libraries, art galleries, exhibition halls, places of worship, law courts. Class F2 covers local community uses: halls and meeting places, outdoor sport and recreation, swimming pools and skating rinks — and small local shops.
The Class F2 shop test is specific and easy to get wrong: a shop no larger than 280 square metres, selling mostly essential goods including food, where there is no other such facility within 1,000 metres. It matters because an F2 shop cannot simply flip to Class E, and because F2 status is often what protects a village shop or a community facility from being converted. If you are buying a small rural retail unit, establish whether it is E or F2 before you assume flexibility that is not there.
Most commercial property is valued for rates by the rental comparison method — the VOA looks at what similar properties actually let for. For specialist premises where there is little or no rental evidence, two other methods apply. The receipts and expenditure method works backwards from trade: gross receipts, less purchases and working expenses, adjusted to a fair maintainable trade, with the remainder divided between a reasonable return to the operator and the rental value of the property. The contractor’s basis values the cost of building an equivalent property where neither rents nor trade give an answer.
Whichever basis applies, the April 2026 multipliers then do the arithmetic: 43.2p below £51,000 rateable value and 48.0p from £51,000 to £499,999 for most commercial property, 38.2p and 43.0p for retail, hospitality and leisure, and 50.8p at £500,000 and above — applied to the whole rateable value, not the excess.
A planning permission is the decision notice plus its conditions, and on specialist premises the conditions are frequently the operative constraint. Opening hours. Delivery and servicing windows. Restrictions on hot food, on external plant, on extraction and odour, on noise limits at the boundary. Car parking numbers and management. Where a permission was granted on appeal or after negotiation, the conditions are often tighter than the norm for the use.
Two further things to check. An Article 4 direction removes permitted development rights in a defined area — several London boroughs have them over town centres and office cores — so the flexibility a Class E building appears to have may not exist on that street. And a section 106 agreement can impose obligations that do not appear on the decision notice at all, including restrictions on occupier type, contributions triggered by intensification, and clawback.
On a car dealership, a health club, a drive-thru or a campus building let to an operator, you are buying a covenant and a consent more than you are buying a building. Three questions decide the price. How long is the unexpired term and is it inside or outside the 1954 Act. How strong is the tenant, and is the rent supported by the trade actually done at that site. And if the operator leaves, what is the realistic alternative use — because on a sui generis building the honest answer is sometimes “a planning application and eighteen months”.
Price the third question even when the first two look comfortable. Specialist buildings let to good covenants trade at yields that assume re-lettability, and re-lettability on a single-purpose building is a planning question rather than a market one. Where a vacant possession value is materially below the investment value, that gap is the risk you are being paid for — and it should be visible in the price rather than assumed away.
It means ‘of its own kind’ — a use that sits in no use class at all. Pubs, hot food takeaways, cinemas, nightclubs, betting shops, launderettes, petrol stations, car showrooms, taxi businesses and waste facilities are all sui generis. The consequence is that there is no permitted flexibility whatsoever: every change of use needs a full planning application judged on its merits. For an occupier whose use is already consented that can be an advantage, because nobody can easily convert the building away from you. For an investor it is a risk, because the alternative use value that normally underpins a commercial valuation may not exist.
Class F2 covers local community uses — halls, meeting places, outdoor sport, swimming pools and skating rinks — and, importantly, small local shops. The shop test is a unit of no more than 280 square metres, selling mostly essential goods including food, where there is no other such facility within 1,000 metres. If a small rural or edge-of-village retail unit falls into F2 rather than Class E, it does not have the flexibility to move to office, café or gym use without permission. It is worth establishing before you buy on an assumption of flexibility.
On specialist property, yes. Where there is little rental evidence, the VOA may value using the receipts and expenditure method, which works backwards from gross receipts through purchases and working expenses to a rental value, adjusted to a fair maintainable trade. Hotels, self-catering accommodation, cinemas and theme parks are typical examples. The assessment is intended to reflect the property rather than the individual operator, but a sustained improvement in trade at a site can feed through. If you are planning significant growth, ask which basis your assessment sits on before you model the cost.
The decision notice and its conditions, before anything else. Hot food takeaway is sui generis in its own right, and the drive-thru element usually carries highways conditions covering access, queuing capacity, visibility splays, servicing hours and sometimes restrictions on the hours the drive-thru lane itself can operate. Then check for a section 106 agreement, which can impose obligations that never appear on the decision notice. On roadside property the constraint is almost never the building; it is the access and the conditions attached to it.
On three things. The unexpired term and whether it is inside or outside the 1954 Act. The covenant strength, tested against the trade actually done at that specific site rather than the group accounts. And the realistic alternative use if the operator leaves — which on a sui generis building can mean a planning application and a long void. The gap between vacant possession value and investment value is the risk you are being paid to take, and it should be explicit in the price rather than assumed away because the covenant looks comfortable today.
