What the Order actually says
Permitted development rights come from the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015. Schedule 2, Part 1 gives householders certain rights, among them Class C, the class that covers a new roof covering on a house and is aimed squarely at a dwellinghouse's roof.
The catch sits in one word, dwellinghouse. Article 2 defines it, and the definition rules flats out: the meaning stops short of a block holding one or more flats, and of any flat that sits inside such a block.
Read that twice, because it excludes two things. A flat inside a block is not a dwellinghouse, and neither is the block itself. So the right does not exist for the individual flat, and it does not exist for the roof above it either.
Class B, which covers dormers, sits in the same Part and has the same limit. The roof rights in that Part are rights of a house, not of a block, however large or however old the block may be, and however many of the flats are owned by the same person.
Canterbury's own wording
Councils put the point in plainer language. On its planning pages Canterbury City Council says that flats and maisonettes have no permitted development rights at all, and that altering how a flat looks from outside therefore takes a planning application.
Note what that wording turns on. The trigger is a change to the outside appearance, not any work at all. A roof repair that does not materially affect the external appearance is not development in the first place, under section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, so the rule leaves a like-for-like repair alone.
| Job | Question to ask |
|---|---|
| Same covering, same look | Does it affect the external appearance? |
| New covering, new colour | Does it change the appearance? |
| New roof window or dormer | Ask the council before any work |
Where the outside of a flat will change, the council's planning team is the right place to ask. The best time to put the question is before the roofer is booked, with photographs of the roof and a note of what you want the new covering to look like.
A big house split into flats
This case is easier to overlook than a flat in a purpose-built block. A large Victorian house on a seafront street is converted into three or four flats. From the pavement it still looks like a house, and the roof still looks like a house roof. In planning terms, though, it is a building containing flats.
Every flat in it is therefore outside the householder rights, and so is the roof above them all. If the freeholder or a management company wants to change the covering to something that looks different, or add a dormer, an application is the starting point, not a courtesy.
That does not mean every repair needs permission. A like-for-like patch repair does not materially change the appearance, so it is not development at all, and a roofer can carry it out without an application.
Who pays and who decides is a separate question, and it comes before the roofer does. Check the lease for who commissions roof work, because the quote goes to whoever does. A leaseholder who orders work on a roof they do not control can end up with a bill and a dispute at the same time.
What else can apply to a flat roof
Planning is one of several separate checks, and a building of flats can meet all of them at once. Go through the list in this order, because an answer to the first question often settles the rest:
- Planning: does the outside appearance change, and is the building one that contains flats?
- Conservation area or Article 4 direction: either can add a layer, as set out in our answer on Article 4 directions and roofs.
- Listed building consent: needed for work that affects the character of a listed building.
- Building Regulations: re-roofing is judged against the Planning Portal's test, with the council's building control team or a registered approver. Tell the freeholder or managing agent before work starts.
The wider rules are in the guide to planning permission for roof work in East Kent, and the steps for finding out about a boundary are in checking for a conservation area.
For roofs across Margate and Thanet, a survey comes first. Tell us the building holds flats, and the plan for the job reflects it from the outset, with the planning question settled before a start date is set.
