Use categories
Housing statistics and English Housing Survey, glossary, published by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in 2019, defines Use categories as: ‘Decisions relating to major or minor developments are classified by reference to the principal use within the development (i.e. the use on which other uses are considered to depend). Normally this is the one which accounts for the greater proportion of the new floorspace (although in certain cases the principal use will be one that does not account for any floorspace as such). If there is any doubt as to the principal use in a multi-storey block, the ground floor use is taken as the principal one. (This rule would apply where, for example, the amounts of floorspace taken up by 2 different uses were approximately equal.) Proposed developments are classified on the basis of the principal use and not that of the complex of which they are part. Thus, a development involving the construction of offices within the curtilage of a general industrial site would be classified as ‘Offices/Research and Development/Light Industry’. Similarly, a dance-floor extension to a restaurant would be classified as ‘All other minor developments’ and not to ‘Retail, distribution and servicing’.’
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