Workshop into Residential?

[Mottie]

You’d get a sore neck watching telly from that sofa!

 

[cdbe]

Is it London? People will go for anything down there. I remember a few years ago they were selling shoebox apartments without kitchens - the estate agents were proudly proclaiming that they had identified a new species of city dwellers who just drank coffee (it had a coffee machine) and ate out all the time.
For the OP, how about a mezzanine/upper floor at the back - could add an extra bedroom or allow you to knock down a bit of the front to park past the access.

 

[Mottie]

.

 

[Terry9]

You’d get a sore neck watching telly from that sofa!

Lol, yeah. I'd actually have the TV on the right hand side and the corridor leading to the bedroom on the left hand side. Or in other words the TV would not be placed on the same side of the 'living area' as the sofa.

I think having the TV directly in front of the sofa will be too close so needs to be placed so that you face lengthways down the property.

As shown in an earlier mock-up I posted on one of the earlier pages of this thread.

This is the main 'problem' with this shaped property....the living room. Kitchens can be small, bathrooms can be small, and the bedroom can work as the bed can be placed against the end wall of the property with a good space in front of the bed so it doesn't feel too small.

It's the living room people spend most time in and tend to watch the TV in and making that work so it's not awkward or cramped is difficult. Though this is simply a 1 bed home for 1 or 2 people, a starter home if you like. One i'd live in. I personally don't watch much TV and prefer to search the web, watch youtube videos etc on my laptop, so would be fine just having a sofa to sit on.

The table in the kitchen area is also a nice option to have to sit and watch the TV from instead of the sofa.

 

[Terry9]

Is it London? People will go for anything down there. I remember a few years ago they were selling shoebox apartments without kitchens - the estate agents were proudly proclaiming that they had identified a new species of city dwellers who just drank coffee (it had a coffee machine) and ate out all the time.
For the OP, how about a mezzanine/upper floor at the back - could add an extra bedroom or allow you to knock down a bit of the front to park past the access.

No, it's Guildford, but not far off London in a lot of ways.... London is commutable (30 mins on the train). Guildford is expensive, and in recent years has been stated to be more unaffordable than London. This workshop is 5 minutes walk from the station. So would potentially be an ideal little pad for someone commuting to London.

A 1 bedroom house here with no garden is at best around £270,000.

A 1 bedroom maisonette with no garden is at best £240,000.


My dilemma is that I want to stay in the town of Guildford. I can only afford up to a £240,000 property which means a 1 bedroom flat or maisonette at best. I dislike these properties, they are small, they have no gardens or balconies, they typically have a kitchen and bathroom from the 1980s/1990s.

I could buy something larger by going through the Shared Ownership scheme, but I'd prefer to avoid this scheme as although I'd highly likely live in it myself, i'd like to have the option open to be able to rent out anything I buy if ever I moved in with someone else or decided to go travelling, or whatever. With Shared Ownership you can not rent the property to someone else.

Ideally I'd like a modest new build (Barratt or Belway Homes type) 1 bedroom apartment to come onto the market, but for some reason the only new builds the borough gives the go ahead to within the town itself are Retirement homes, Student accommodation, large posh 1 bedroom apartments priced at £350,000 or 1 bedroom apartments that would be ideal for me to buy on the open market, but they choose to put most of them up for 'Affordable Rent' and the other few up for 'Shared Ownership'.

Where the heck are the new build, open market, £270,000 to £290,000 1 bed apartments within the town?!!! it's either 1 bed apartments for the rich or 1 bedroom apartments for the poor.

So this is why I have gone down the thinking outside the box route.


Yeah, this idea I have would result in a small home, but I could give you a long list of links to pokey little maisonettes and flats within the town.


About the upper floor idea at the back....would this be allowed? I have assumed I can't build above a certain height. To be honest I don't know what that height is, but have assumed it's at least the typical size of a single storey building ~2.6metres.

 

[Terry9]

Found a couple who live off grid in the Aussie Bush, they have a modern 'tiny house'.... seems pretty much like it's the same width of this workshop.... looks pretty cool. Seems to work with the TV opposite the sofa. It's pretty much setup like I'd set my concept up. Though they have stairs and a bedroom space upstairs, whereas I'd have everything on one floor.

Taken from:

 

[Leofric]

Yeah, prob will end up being even tighter than I'd hoped. But could do with some official measurements for the width of the plot to confirm.

Yes, exactly, precise dimensions of overall width of drive, width of strip giving neighbour right of way, internal width of existing building. Then see if it is worth proceeding any further.

 

[Terry9]

Yes, exactly, precise dimensions of overall width of drive, width of strip giving neighbour right of way, internal width of existing building. Then see if it is worth proceeding any further.

If someone had tried to get planning permission to convert / knock down and rebuild this workshop into a residential property, would this information need to be disclosed? I assume so.

I see there were 2 applications to change the use of the premises.

One was to change it from a place to store and deliver drainage equipment to preparation and delivery of party food. APPROVED 2006.


I did also find this thing called Permitted Development Rights:

If you are planning on converting a commercial property, planning permission is not always necessary. The 2013 Permitted Development Rights (PDR) statute states that some types of commercial property do not need planning permission before being converted to residential.

Types of building covered by Permitted Development Rights may include:

1. Offices
2. Properties designed to carry out light industrial processes, such as factories, workshops and warehouses
3. Shops and other properties where the size of the premises is no larger than 150 square metres.

 

[Leofric]

If someone had tried to get planning permission to convert / knock down and rebuild this workshop into a residential property, would this information need to be disclosed? I assume so.

It doesn't really matter what somebody else might have done, it is information you need to know to see if it would work for your proposals.

 

[Nige F]

Ideally I'd like a modest new build (Barratt or Belway Homes typer 1 bedroom apartments that would be ideal for me to buy on the open market, but they choose to put most of them up for 'Affordable Rent' and the other few up for 'Shared Ownership'.

Beware any form of leasehold !

 

[Terry9]

Beware any form of leasehold !

That's difficult when the cheapest type of properties are apartments, which 99% of the time leasehold.

Difficult to find a freehold property that falls within my budget.

Hence my research into converting this workshop.

 

[Terry9]

This is the type of thing you get around here at the bottom end of the market. A 1 bedroom house and this is the upstairs. It's cramped. A spiral staircase going up to an awkward space. You could get a double bed in there, but doubt you could walk down either side of it.

You probably only have 2 metres max width of which you can stand up in without smashing your head.

£275,000.

 

[Terry9]

All new residential development must conform to the nationally described space standards as set out by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)Technical requirements....

And here they are:

The standard requires that:

a. the dwelling provides at least the gross internal floor area and built-in storage area set out in Table 1 below. NOT SURE WHAT THIS MEANS WITH 'NUMBER OF BED SPACES (PERSONS)'. IT WILL JUST BE ME LIVING THERE. I ASSUME IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT IF FLOOR PACE IS ONLY 39 SQUARE METRES I CAN'T HAVE SOMEONE ELSE STAY OVER, LOL. I ASSUME IT MEANS NUMBER OF SPACES FOR BEDS, AND THEREFORE NUMBER OF BEDS. AS I WILL ONLY HAVE ROOM FOR 1 DOUBLE BED I GUESS I FALL UNDER THE 39 SQUARE METRE REQUIREMENT?

Where a 1b1p has a shower room instead of a bathroom, the floor area may be reduced from 39m2 to 37m2 , as shown bracketed.

b. a dwelling with two or more bedspaces has at least one double (or twin) bedroom. YES. 1 DOUBLE WILL BE PROVIDED.

c. in order to provide one bedspace, a single bedroom has a floor area of at least 7.5m2 and is at least 2.15m wide. N/A NO SINGLE BEDROOMS WILL EXIST.

d. in order to provide two bedspaces, a double (or twin bedroom) has a floor area of at least 11.5m2. e. One double bedroom is at least 2.75m wide.
SO THE HOUSE WOULD NEED TO BE AT LEAST 2.75m WIDE TO HAVE A CHANCE OF APPROVAL, AND IF THE BEDROOM CAN BE 2.75m WIDE, THEN THE LENGTH NEEDS TO BE ~4.3m, THIS INCLUDES WARDROBE SPACE, BUT A WARDROBE SHOULD NOT REDUCE THE WIDTH OF THE ROOM.

f. any area with a headroom of less than 1.5m is not counted within the Gross Internal Area unless used solely for storage (if the area under the stairs is to be used for storage, assume a general floor area of 1m2 within the Gross Internal Area). g. any other area that is used solely for storage and has a headroom of 900- 1500mm (such as under eaves) is counted at 50% of its floor area, and any area lower than 900mm is not counted at all.
ALL GOOD. HEADROOM THROUGHOUT WILL BE AT LEAST 2.3 METRES.

h. a built-in wardrobe counts towards the Gross Internal Area and bedroom floor area requirements, but should not reduce the effective width of the room below the minimum widths set out above. The built-in area in excess of 0.72m2 in a double bedroom and 0.36m2 in a single bedroom counts towards the built-in storage requirement. OK.

i. the minimum floor to ceiling height is 2.3m for at least 75% of the Gross Internal Area.
ALL GOOD. HEADROOM THROUGHOUT WILL BE AT LEAST 2.3 METRES.



I DON'T EXPECT THE PROPERTY IS CAPABLE OF BEING 2.75m IN WIDTH, BUT I'M AWAITING THE MEASUREMENTS.

 

[Mottie]

You’re never going to really know until you apply for planning permission. When you get the measurements, can you go and get pre-application advice from the local authority?

 

[Terry9]

You’re never going to really know until you apply for planning permission. When you get the measurements, can you go and get pre-application advice from the local authority?

Hi Mottie,

As my last message....

'All new residential development must conform to the nationally described space standards as set out by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)Technical requirements.'

So surely if this is a must, then going to the local authority isn't going to help if it's impossible to fulfil these space standards?

From looking at photos I'd guess that the width is approx 2.4 metres, but I need a 2.75 metre width to conform to these space requirements due to the bedroom needing to be such a width. I don't see anyway around this other than trying to buy ~0.4 x ~4.3 metres of one of the neighbours gardens, which is unlikely and risky.

Just waiting on someone to get back to me on the width. If somehow the property is the necessary width, then as far as I have researched there are several green lights...I can't see anything that sticks out as a red light. That said, I may have missed something and I don't know how much neighbour's can influence a planning decision.

It's a Brownfield site, it has an existing WC and Kitchen. It's in an area classed as an 'Urban Area', and is not classed as green belt. The local authority are positive towards house building in this area. It's a run down looking workshop in the middle of a residential street. But this all means nothing if I can't make the bedroom 2.75 metres wide.