Planning deregulation and commodification: How is housing precarity structurally encouraged through Permitted Development Rights?

England’s planning deregulation, through the 2013 Permitted Development Rights modification, has seriously affected London’s housing landscape. This deregulation has been effective—from a market perspective—in converting vacant offices and increasing housing supply, but has also aggravated housing precarity. Despite a growing literature on deregulation and Permitted Development Rights, few studies integrate commodification and deregulation as intertwined drivers of housing precarity. This study’s pivotal question is how housing precarity is structurally encouraged through Permitted Development Rights. Integrating semi-structured interviews, policy analysis, and secondary sources, I explain how state-led deregulation, driven by neoclassical economics, has commodified office-to-residential conversions by legitimising the removal of housing quality requirements, enabling owners to prioritise profit over standards. This deregulation allowed the neoclassical rationale of utility maximisation and “highest and best use” to dominate, producing precarious housing outcomes that were not inevitable but structurally encouraged. This study critically unpacks the structural mechanisms that fuel this policy modification and stresses the urgent need to roll back deregulation policies, particularly Permitted Development Rights, to address London’s housing shortage without jeopardising basic quality standards for its residents.