PROPERTY, ECCLESTON SQUARE (USE) (Hansard, 5 July 1960)

§ Sir Colin Thornton-Kemsley (North Angus and Mearns)

I think I owe it to you, Mr. Speaker, and the House to explain why I, the Member for what many would consider to be a remote Scottish constituency, am interesting myself tonight in the affairs of a constituent of yours in Eccleston Square in the City of Westminster. I do it because you are precluded from raising these matters on the Floor of the House, and indeed it would not be possible for you to do so, and you have done me the honour of suggesting that I, who have perhaps always taken some interest in planning matters, with which this is concerned, should raise this matter on your behalf.

The facts are these. Your constituent, Mr. Speaker, a Mr. Ancrum Evans, chartered accountant, has a house, No. 8 Eccleston Square, and the adjoining mews property, No. 8 Hugh Mews, Westminster—a large London house facing the square with basements, ground floor and four upper storeys, with the rather typical mews addition of two storeys. He acquired that in 1951 and proceeded later, in 1957, to acquire the adjoining house, No. 9 Eccleston Square.

In the meantime, in 1953, he had acquired from the London County Council a personal planning permission to use three rooms, two of them on the ground floor and one of them on the first floor, in No. 8 Eccleston Square for the purposes of his own professional business as a chartered accountant. In 1957, he acquired the adjoining house, as I have said, together with the two-storey mews at the back, No. 9 Hugh Mews. At that time, in 1957, there were two rooms on the ground floor of No. 9 Hugh Mews which were used as an office and store in connection with a builder's yard, and there is no question about there being an established business user for this purpose of an office and store in No. 9 Eccleston Square from the appointed day under the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947.

412 The planning position was that Mr. Ancrum Evans had personal planning permission, lasting so long as he remained a resident in No. 8 Eccleston Square, to use the three rooms in No. 8 as offices for the purposes of his own professional business. He also had an established business user in respect of two rooms in No. 9.

In the summer of 1958, Mr. Evans undertook structural alterations of the two adjoining houses which were part of a terrace. He made intercommunicating doors on the ground floor level and at the first and second floor levels, so that both houses were intercommunicating on three floors. He has since occupied them entirely as one residence and they are separately assessed as one hereditament for rating purposes. I have before me the latest demand note for the number in the rate book—4/964, 8 and 9 Eccleston Square— Offices, house, garages and premises, including 8 and 9 Hugh Mews. Rateable value £568. In the meantime, Mr. Evans, who is practising from that house under the address No. 8 Eccleston Square as a chartered accountant in the name of the firm of Rutherfords—he is himself a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants—had taken in a young partner, Mr. T. H. D. Green. Mr. Green is a bachelor and a very hapy arrangement was made whereby he should live on the premises where he worked.

The occupants of the one hereditament are as follows—I make no apology for bringing these facts to the notice of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, because it is important that the House should understand exactly the problem involved. There is Mr. Evans' mother, the Hon. Mrs. Evans, and her sister-in-law; there is an old friend of the family whose age, I believe, is over 80; there is Mr. Ancrum Evans and his wife and four small children. I say "small" because the youngest is 1 year old and the oldest is 10. There is the partner, Mr. Green, and a resident caretaker and his wife. Mr. Evans and his partner work on the premises, with a resident caretaker and a cleaner who does the office cleaning and so on.

I suggest that this is a very happy arrangement, in fact it is a model arrangement. Here is a family house 413 where the head of the house is working and making no demand on the public transport services. He is not making a daily journey to his office by car, he is not a commuter and he and his partner are living on the premises. I think it is an ideal arrangement and one which the planners ought to welcome.

But the young family is growing up. I told the House that the present personal planning permission allows Mr. Evans the use of two rooms on the ground floor of No. 8 as his personal offices and one room, which was formerly a studio on the first floor of No. 8, for office purposes. That studio is quite a big room. I have plans before me and I have taken measurements and so on, and it is a room of about 270 square feet. It is on the first floor which is not very convenient from the business point of view. Mr. Evans wants to make that room into a nursery for the young family. All he asks is that personal planning permission for one room on the first floor of No. 8 should be transferred to equivalent but smaller rooms—one or two, or perhaps three, it would be a case of measuring up—in No. 9 which is still part of the same hereditament.

He wants to change from the first floor studio to equivalent floor space—I make a point of that—in No. 9 and he has been refused permission to do so by the London County Council. Naturally, he appealed and his appeal was heard at a public inquiry in May of last year. It was turned down.

I have tried to be as fair as I can and I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that everything I have said is factual. The reasons given for the refusal to allow this simple thing were, first, it was said that this was a residential zone in which the London County Council had consistently opposed non-conforming uses. Secondly, it was said that planning permission for this purpose would create a precedent. Thirdly—this was not said at the time but it has been said by my right hon. Friend the Minister in a letter which I have here of 13th November, 1959, and from which I quote—this had a further objectionable feature in that it involved the introduction of an office use into a house, No. 9, which had not hitherto been used for business purposes.

414 I pause there because that is quite untrue. My right hon. Friend was misinformed when he said that. As I have already shown, there is an established user in No. 9, but in so far as that is a point, I want to make this clear because I want to make a suggestion to my hon. Friend. It is absolutely clear that No. 8 is the business address; 8, Eccleston Square appears on Messrs. Rutherford's notepaper. It happens that No. 8 has an imposing portico and people approaching it would never think of going to No. 9, where there is a separate front door. It is No. 8 that attracts them and that is the entrance through which the very few clients who go to see Mr. Ancrum Evans and his partner approach his offices. There is no indication that they go to No. 9.

In so far as my right hon. Friend feared that by granting planning permission to use a couple of rooms in No. 9 for office purposes he would be granting a new planning permission for Nos. 8 and 9, which had not so far had it, I make the point that that is not the case. Even if it were, no one from the outside could possibly tell. There would be no difference because people go through the portico of No. 8. It is as simple as that. The real trouble is that there is no such use recognised in the Use Classes Order as part-residential and part-office.

Of course, this is not the right place to submit it, but we, want a new class in the Use Classes Order, something which might possibly be called a professional office use by a resident occupier. I personally would not at all mind if a proviso were added that the space used for exclusive professional use should not exceed 25 per cent. of the whole, or something like that. A new Use Classes Order provision is needed to cover this kind of personal professional use in the residence of a professional man.

I turn to the London County Council objection that this is a residential zone. I am informed on very good authority by people who have made an exhaustive search into all the users of the residences around Eccleston Square that the position is as follows. One end of Eccleston Square is business user. They are concerned with only three sides of the square which are residential. I am informed that on those three sides which are 415 residential no fewer than thirty-three houses are occupied by business or professional firms or societies. So we have at one end business users and at the other end coaches going to and from Elizabeth Street and frequently coaches go down one side of the square, using it as a short cut. It is also used as a car park. The whole place is one great car park. To talk about it as residential is really to stretch the imagination. It is used for all sorts of purposes as well as residential.

The London County Council made the point that no permission for nonresidential user in the square has been granted since 1955, when the development plan was approved. I am not at all sure that that is correct. Indeed, it certainly is not the case in respect of No. 58, which is the Buddhist Headquarters and in respect of which the Buddhist Society in August, 1956. was given personal permission to use some rooms as offices.

But I do not rest my case on any point like that. I think that essentially, stripped of all its irrelevancies, this case is basically simple. At a time when there is so much for the planners to do, when we are all concerned about industrial location and about competing demands on a declining area of open land in this country, and when the House is rightly concerned about the rocketing price of land, for planners to go to the absurd lengths of refusing a professional man permission to change the use of one room in his house and to transfer that use to another room in the same hereditament is to bring planning into disrepute.

We all agree, I am sure, that planning ought to be flexible. I can imagine nothing more rigid than a grant of planning permission in respect of specific, named rooms and an obstinate refusal, which has been apparent throughout the case, by the London County Council and, I am bound to say, by the Minister, too, to permit a transfer of that permission from one room to another in the same hereditament. The need for flexibility has never been more clearly demonstrated than in this case, when it arose because the children in the family were growing up and a room was needed on the first floor in which they 416 could have a nursery. To have this rigid inflexibility and to say, "You shall not have a nursery in that room because we, the planners, say that you must not and say that you must have your office there and in no other room, not even on the equivalent floor space in the same hereditament," is ridiculous.

I want to be absolutely frank with the House. I am not dealing with one of my constituents. If I were I would say the same thing, and I would say the same thing if he were present tonight to hear the debate. I have some sympathy with my hon. Friend. Mr. Speaker, your constituent feels strongly about this matter—I think understandably and rightly. He has expressed himself with force, and if he has made himself a nuisance about it, I do not blame him. I think that he was justified in doing so, and I do not think that that ought to count against him. I suggest in all seriousness to my hon. Friend that he and I should get together, have a talk and see whether we cannot resolve this difficulty. It should not be impossible for two sensible persons to get together and to find some way out of this situation.

§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Sir Keith Joseph)

My hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley) has been most courteous, as usual, and has been most fair and cogent in what he has said. Obviously if I were to answer him by chaffering details of square footage and superficial area I should prove conclusively that planning was as rigid as he hoped that it was not.

There is a bigger principle behind this repeated refusal of planning permission to your constituent, Mr. Speaker. I could take issue on the details of the suggested equivalent change of use. I could quarrel with some of the figures which my hon. Friend has put forward. But that is not my object this evening. There is a desperate shortage of residential space in London, particularly in areas which are most suitable for living space—namely, the areas which are zoned for residential use. On the other hand, there is quite a lot of office space of different ages and different sizes, and no doubt different prices, into which a professional man could fit himself.

417 When Mr. Evans sought planning permission from the L.C.C. in 1953, he got planning permission only on a personal basis while he himself should live on the premises in question. He now wants to swop out of these premises into an adjacent one, and says that he will give up his present office user in No. 8. I have absolutely no doubt that he means this, but while he continues to reside in what is a single hereditament it could be very awkward for the planning authority if, in fact, he were to continue to make use, or permit use to be continued, of his existing offices as well as the new one.

The fact really is, however, that since Mr. Evans got permission in 1953, planning policy in London to restrict office user in residential zones has grown a great deal tougher, and it has grown a great deal tougher particularly since 1955. There has been a steadily increasing recognition that we must, in the desperate shortage of residential space, very seriously see that the space is kept for residential use and save from office use as much suitable residential space as is humanly possible.

I doubt whether Mr. Evans would have got his personal planning permission had he been applying for it now. Since he has applied for it now, he is asking approval, in fact, to extend an office use into the neighbouring house that he has bought. The effect of this would be that he would exclude the possibility of space in that neighbouring house, now unused, being used in future for residential purposes, and it is that, above all, that seems to me to justify the refusal of the London County Council, and the refusal of my right hon. Friend on appeal, to give him what he wants.

It is open to Mr. Evans to say, as my hon. Friend said very vigorously, that the whole square is littered with office user. Of course it is, but as far as I am aware no permission for office user has been given since the more recent change in planning policy to which I have referred. My hon. Friend says that he thinks he can show us one property for which such user has been granted. That is news to me. As far as I am aware, no such planning permission has been given since 1955.

I must say that I support very strongly the view of the London County Council, and of my right hon. Friend, that Mr. 418 Evans should seek offices for his expanding business somewhere outside a residential zone, and should not seek to infect with office use the adjacent house. In fact, I very much hope that he will accept the situation, and will make available for residential use, either by himself or by others, the space in No. 9 which, as came out at the inquiry, could be converted, at a certain expense, into residential use.

I do not for a moment seek to suggest that taxpayers' money would be available for that particular operation, but, of course, it will be known to my hon. Friend that the taxpayer does make money available as a grant towards the conversion or improvement of a new unit of dwelling space.

Mr. Evans got personal planning permission in the much less tough planning days, in this sense, of 1953. I do not know whether he got it just for himself, or for himself and an assistant, or for himself and a secretary, but from what knowledge I have of the case it seems to me that his firm has now grown and that, therefore, the purpose for which the planning permission was sought—and the purpose for which that planning permission was given—has now changed.

His business has grown. Planning policy about offices has grown tougher, and the recognition of the need to preserve space for residential purposes has grown tougher. Nor can I accept my hon. Friend's contention that were Mr. Evans to be permitted to open offices in No. 9, no evidence would be available to the outsider, so that no precedent would he known. The very fact that we have had this debate will surely mean that anybody seeking to show a precedent to the London County Council why it should allow office space in a residential zone ensures that that is not the case.

I cannot accept either my hon. Friend's very carefully thought out view about the Use Classes Order. That does not make any distinction between one sort of office and another, and I ask my hon. Friend to recognise that it is not relevant in this case.

I must point out that Mr. Evans has, through my hon. Friend, very vigorously sought his rights. It is open to him to make another planning application. I am not for a moment suggesting what the 419 result of such a planning application would be, but every citizen can renew his planning application and, if it is turned down, it is open to him to appeal and my right hon. Friend must then reach a decision. If Mr. Evans can show new facts—my hon. Friend has not convinced me this evening that there are any new facts—no doubt he will consider that course.

420 Finally, I ask my lion. Friend to accept that this is not a narrow decision taken by using a ruler to measure a plan, though no doubt the decision might be justified on those grounds. The decision arises from a much tougher planning policy, with whose purposes I am sure that the whole House agrees.