Homes converted from London council offices are permitted to be far below national minimum size due to deregulation of planning rules

Hundreds of tiny studio flats, many smaller than a budget hotel room, are to be squeezed into an eleven-storey block in north London as its developer takes advantage of the government’s relaxation of planning regulations.

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Plans for Barnet House, used by the London borough of Barnet’s housing department, reveal that 96% of the 254 proposed flats will be smaller than the national minimum space standards of 37 sq metres (44 sq yards) for a single person.

The tiniest homes will be 16 sq metres – 40% smaller than the average Travelodge room. They are legal because of government deregulation designed to promote the conversion of underused office space to help meet housebuilding targets.

Local residents have labelled the Barnet scheme “ridiculous” and “immoral”, comparing the planned homes to dog kennels.

Once kitted out with basic furniture, such as a small kitchenette, bed and wardrobe, the smallest flats will have very little room to move around. There appears to be little space, for example, for a sofa or a washing machine, unless it is stacked on top of the fridge.

In the surrounding area, studio flats of a similar scale to most planned at Barnet House sell for around £180,000 and rent for around £800 per month.

Office buildings in Croydon have also been converted into studios with floor areas of as little as 15 sq metres under the Tory deregulation. Housing experts have attacked the relaxation of planning regulations as a “race to the bottom”, but ministers insist the measure is helping to deliver vital new housing, and point out that more than 10,000 new homes were created from office buildings last year.

Under the “permitted development” system, developers who convert offices into homes do not have to meet minimum floor area standards, considered by researchers to be important for health, educational attainment and family relationships. Neither do they have to include any affordable housing.

Housing campaigners, including Shelter and the Royal Institute of British Architects, have warned the schemes are producing overcrowded “rabbit hutch” and “shoebox” homes that will seriously damage residents’ quality of life.

Premier House in Edgware, north-west London, is another controversial office-to-housing plan.

The schemes are prevalent in London and the south-east of England, where high housing prices incentivise owners to convert office buildings. Other examples of concern include theformer American Airlines office block near Heathrow, which has been turned into 288 flats, and Lewisham House in south-east London, for which an application was lodged for 230 residential units.

With converted offices accounting for almost 14,000 new dwellings last year – almost three-quarters of the growth in housing supply– the government appears unlikely to give up the strategy.

Tory-controlled Barnet council, which occupies part of Barnet House but does not own the building, is opposed to the development but said that because of national government policy it has no power to reject it on the grounds it is too cramped.



“It is always difficult for a local authority when something is happening in its area over which it has no control,” the council’s leader, Richard Cornelius, told the Guardian. “The government has given developers power to convert businesses premises into residential premises under permitted development. The sizes of some of the flats would not be what we think are appropriate living spaces for our residents and we do not support the scheme in its current form.”

Local residents have also raised objections. One told a consultation the “tiny cubicles [are] … a travesty of what proper housing is about”; another said “to pack this many people into this small a space is ridiculous”, while a third said the “dog kennel homes” were “immoral”.

The application has been lodged by the building’s leaseholder, Meadow Partnership, to designs by HKR Architects. Both companies declined requests to comment.

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Julia Park, an architect and housing design expert, said the Barnet House plans – which propose 20 apartments per floor accessed off from a single corridor – were overcrowded even for single people. The plans include no shared facilities such as a laundry room, or bike storage, placing even greater pressure on space in the tiny flats.

“Singles tend to become couples and it’s quite possible that families will end up in here,” she said. “Permitted development conversions are showing what a race to the bottom looks like. Living in one room with no private outdoor space will take its toll on individuals and cause tension in relationships. Everyone will smell supper being cooked and hear the TV and the bathroom. Unless the soundproofing is really good, everyone will hear their neighbours too, and because the flats are single aspect, overheating is a significant risk.”



The Department for Communities and Local Government declined to comment officially, but a spokesman stressed that the permitted development system allowed new homes to be created more quickly.

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The housing minister, Gavin Barwell, has previously defended the policy as being responsible for thousands of “desperately needed new homes”.

But the shadow housing minister, John Healey, accused the government of “giving developers a free hand to bypass proper planning process, sidestep affordable housing requirements and build rabbit hutch homes that aren’t fit for purpose”.

“Short-sighted new developments are no shortcut to building the homes the country needs,” the Labour MP said

Graeme Brown, interim chief executive of Shelter, said: “In theory, converting offices sounds like a good way of creating some of the homes we need in a time of crisis. But in reality, it’s often used by developers as a way of cashing in on people’s desperation by building unaffordable, rabbit-hutch homes.

“Our homes are already among the smallest in Europe, and if the government allows developers to cut corners by slashing space standards in homes even more, they will be punishing ordinary families in the process.”