Fully equipped spaces ideal for therapists, consultants, and healthcare professionals, available via Fraser Bond.
Planning is rarely the obstacle here. Since 2020 the provision of medical or health services has sat in Class E(e), so a former shop, office or café can generally become a clinic with no planning application at all. The constraint is the other side: where a regulated activity is involved, CQC registration attaches to the location, not just to the practitioner — and the CQC’s own stated minimum is ten weeks. Sign a lease that starts before that and you are paying rent to sit empty.
Medical and health services sit in Class E(e), so most changes from shop, office or café use need no planning application. The exception to know about is premises attached to the residence of the practitioner, which sits outside E(e) and is a different question entirely.
Where you are carrying on a regulated activity, registration is provider and location based. A new address generally has to be added, the CQC’s stated minimum is ten weeks and it frequently runs far longer. We build that into the lease timing rather than discovering it afterwards.
A clinical hand-wash basin, ventilation, floor and surface finishes that can be cleaned, acoustic separation good enough for a confidential consultation, and somewhere lawful for clinical waste to be stored pending collection. Rooms marketed as clinical often fail on at least one.
Our fee is paid by the landlord or the practice. No fee to you and no retainer — and no reason for us to put you in a room your registration will not cover.
What you actually do in the room decides everything: whether registration is engaged, what the room must physically provide, whether you need waiting space and reception, and whether sessional hire or a dedicated room is the right structure.
Lawful use class, whether the building already hosts registered activity, physical provision in the room, waiting and reception arrangements, clinical waste handling, and access and parking for patients.
If registration at a new location is required, the lease start date and any rent-free period need to reflect it. That is a negotiation, and it is far easier before heads of terms than after you are paying for an empty room.
The September 2020 use class reforms brought the provision of medical or health services into Class E(e), alongside shops, offices, cafés, gyms, nurseries and indoor sport. Movement between any of those is not development and needs no planning application. In practice that means a vacant retail unit, an office suite or a former café can usually become a clinic without going near a planning committee.
Three qualifications. Class E(e) expressly excludes the use of premises attached to the residence of the consultant or practitioner, so a consulting room within or attached to your own home is a different planning question. An Article 4 direction can remove permitted development rights in a defined area, and many boroughs have them over town centres. And planning permission is not the same as the conditions attached to it — hours of use, parking, signage and waste storage frequently appear on the decision notice and bind you regardless of the class.
Where what you do amounts to a regulated activity — most commonly treatment of disease, disorder or injury or diagnostic and screening procedures — registration with the Care Quality Commission is required, and it is location based. Practising from a new address generally means that address has to be on your registration before you begin, and where you operate from several premises each has to be included.
There is a long-standing exception for medical practitioners in independent practice, but it is narrower than people assume and does not extend to surgical procedures, treatment under anaesthesia or cosmetic surgery. Whether it applies turns on the specific activity and how the practice is structured, so it is a question for the CQC on your facts rather than an assumption to build a lease around.
A room described as a consulting room is not necessarily fit to consult in. The things most often missing are a dedicated clinical hand-wash basin as distinct from a kitchen or toilet sink, adequate ventilation, and floor, wall and worktop finishes that can actually be cleaned to a clinical standard rather than merely tidied.
Then acoustic separation, which matters more here than in almost any other kind of let space. A consultation that can be heard in the waiting room is a confidentiality problem, not an inconvenience — and stud partitions in converted retail and office units very often fail this. Test it rather than asking about it: stand outside while someone talks inside at normal volume.
And the practical patient-facing points that get overlooked at a viewing: step-free access from the street rather than from a car park, a waiting area that is not a corridor, an accessible toilet on the same floor, and somewhere for a chaperone or a companion to sit.
Anyone who produces, holds or disposes of controlled waste owes a duty of care under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, and clinical waste sits within that. In practice it means storing it securely and separately pending collection, transferring it only to an authorised person such as a registered carrier, and keeping the transfer documentation.
In a shared building, establish who holds the contract and whether your waste is covered by it or whether you need your own. Sessional room hire agreements are frequently silent on this, and ‘the building deals with it’ is not a document you can produce to a regulator. Get it in writing, along with where sharps are stored and how often collection happens.
Most consulting room hire is sessional — by the half-day or the day — and is supplied under a licence rather than a lease. You get no exclusive possession and no security of tenure under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. That suits a practice that is building up, and it means your protections are contractual rather than statutory.
Usually not. Since September 2020 the provision of medical or health services has sat in Class E(e), alongside shops, offices, cafés and gyms, so moving between those uses is not development and needs no application. Three things to check: whether an Article 4 direction removes those rights in that area, what conditions are attached to the existing permission — hours, parking, signage and waste storage often are — and whether the premises are attached to the practitioner's own residence, which is expressly excluded from Class E(e) and is a separate question.
Generally no. Where you are carrying on a regulated activity, registration is location based as well as provider based, so a new address normally has to be added before you practise there, and each premises you work from has to be included. There is a long-standing exception for medical practitioners in independent practice, but it is narrower than commonly assumed and does not cover surgical procedures, treatment under anaesthesia or cosmetic surgery. Whether it applies depends on your specific activity, so confirm with the CQC rather than assuming.
Further than you think if registration is involved. The CQC's own guidance is to allow at least ten weeks from submission to interview, and six to nine months is not unusual in practice. A lease that starts before your registration does means paying rent on a room you cannot lawfully use. The answer is to negotiate the commencement date, or a rent-free period, around the registration timeline — landlords accommodate this more readily than tenants expect, because the alternative is a tenant who cannot trade.
Acoustics, first, and by testing rather than asking. Stand outside while someone speaks inside at normal volume. Converted retail and office units very often have stud partitions that fail this, and a consultation audible from the waiting room is a confidentiality problem rather than an annoyance. Then look for a dedicated clinical hand-wash basin as opposed to a kitchen or toilet sink, adequate ventilation, cleanable finishes, step-free access from the street, and an accessible toilet on the same floor.
