Recently, a court ruling shed light on ‘subsequent’ permissions one can obtain for a site with a regularization permit allowing developments that might not be granted under current policy requirements. It’s a standard condition in regularization permits that states: ‘If the development hereby approved is modified (i.e. altered, extended, removed, or redeveloped), the eventual development on site must conform to all the plans, policies, and regulations applicable at that time.’ Some interpret this to mean that if a new permit is sought, everything approved by way of the regularization permit must remain untouched. I’ve always challenged this interpretation.
Indeed, I found myself assisting a permit holder against a third-party objector who argued that our regularization permit didn’t permit further interventions. We disagreed with this assertion. Subsequently, the objector took the matter to court, which scrutinized the standard condition within our regularization permit:
‘If the development hereby approved is modified (i.e. altered, extended, removed, or redeveloped), the eventual development on site must conform to all the plans, policies, and regulations applicable at that time.’
The court clarified that this clause doesn’t imply that if a full development application is submitted later for the same site, nothing can be changed in areas covered by the regularization permit. On the contrary, the court ruled that subsequent interventions and changes are permitted as long as it’s demonstrated that they don’t substantially deviate from the essence of the regularization permit. In this case, the interventions involved internal space division without any extension or change in use. The court found no issue.
The court ruling can be found here.
