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I recently applied for a Certificate of Lawfulness on a property that was built over 15 years ago. The previous owner lived there as his first home but I have been using it as a second home/holiday home for the last five years. I applied for class C3 dwelling house, but the council only agreed to give me the Certificate for a second home/holiday home. I have been unable to find any legal definition of what a second home is, for planning purposes, or whether such a thing even exists in law. Of course it has implications for capital gains tax, council tax and so on, but for purely planning purposes can anyone enlighten me please?

Just to be clear, this is not a holiday let. It is purely for our personal use.

And the planning officer has said that if we want to live there permanently we would have to apply for change of use, from second home to primary residence.

If the previous owner used it as their primary residence as a C3 dwelling house, having it changed to a holiday home or back to a dwelling house is not usually seen as a material change of use.

Are there any Planning conditions that relate to the actual use of this dwelling?

Or is this more to do with housing/council tax as opposed to Planning?

The property was built with no planning and remarkably the local council never picked up on this. So there are no planning conditions in place, although I believe a file dating back 10 years or so is missing.

The previous owner paid council tax and I continue to do so, but notified them that it was a second home shortly after I bought it.

The lack of planning is the reason I applied for a Certificate of Lawfulness. I am just surprised that in granting it, the only gave it as a second home and told me I will have to apply for change of use if I want to live there permanently.

In my opinion, it isn’t a change of use. It still comes under C3...

https://www.planningportal.co.uk/permission/common-projects/change-of-use/use-classes

So unless Planning are referring to something a little different. Similarly to how people get confused when converting a garage and thinking that falls under a change of use.

Thank you. That's very helpful

Sorry to come back to this. Is it correct to say that C3 cannot be divided into subcategories, such as C3 (primary residence) and C3 (second home)?

Copy and paste the link as provided.