What On Earth Are Public Safety Zones?
Even as experienced property investors you still come across something new. This month it was Public Safety Zones and their impact on planning. This came about when we were looking into the conversion of an existing BTL Property in our portfolio to an 8 Bed HMO that we planned to sell to an overseas investor once complete. The property is located in an area that had no planning restrictions so there should be no issues with us getting planning. We passed this over to James who looks after all things planning for us to give the project a quick review just in case we missed anything.
Luckily we did miss something as he flagged up the fact that the property is located within a Public Safety Zone (PSZ) which has the ability to control development within a certain area. Whilst we are still able to get a change of use from C3 (Residential) to C4 (Small 6 Bed HMO) however, we wouldn’t easily get the SG (Large 8 Bed HMO) change of use due to this PSZ.
So what is the PSZ? As the property is located near Heathrow Airport the Civil Aviation Authority has established a Public Safety Zone in the surrounding area due to the potential risk of an accident from an aircraft. The theory is that they want to reduce the density of housing within the area surrounding the airport and therefore minimise the casualty risk in the event of an incident.
It’s early days and we are still looking into this and its potential impact but its certainly a new one for us. Now I’m off to read a 12 page document from the Department for Transport on the control of development in Airport Public Safety Zones. What fun!
If you want to read the whole document about PSZ, you can find it here.