Help / Clarity on fire cert necessity / material change of use definition / cessation

Carolobr

I am starting a cafe business in my families ancestral home (pub) and am having difficulty navigating planning laws & regulations - a lot of the information surrounding planning seems open to interpretation and sometimes dependant on who you deal with in the planning office. Our case is not black & white as there are no existing records of our building due most likely to the fact it has been operating under the one use in the one family for nearly 200 years. The building was built c.1830 with an intended use as a Pub , it is of architectural interest in our town and maintains much of its original shop frontage and much of the interior features are intact. It has been owned and operated by my family since 1864. The pub closed in the mid nineties and my grandmother continued guesthouse accommodation up until her death in 2015.

The building is now in my mothers name and we are eager to restore some life to the space. Part of our original plan for the building (3 storey Townhouse) is to re-instate the commercial unit on the ground-floor and maintain guest accommodation on the upper floors. I learned through a meeting with a fire safety consultant that operating accommodation above a cafe was deemed risky and would require quite a bit of alteration in order to comply with legislation ( i.e. construction of lobby's, fire-escape / fire-walls/ separate entrance etc. ) due to budget constraints the accommodation side is now on hold and will be phased out most likely to commence in 2018. For now while the ground floor operates as a cafe in the existing bar unit, the upper floors will be unoccupied. In April we applied for planning permission 'change of use' - from what I understood this was due to our future intention to diversify and operate two lines of business in the one building (guest accommodation upstairs and cafe downstairs) a lot of the proposed work outlined in the application relates to future works necessary to introduce the accommodation unit. Last week our fire consultant advised us that we would require a fire cert and disability access cert before we open the cafe this summer as a fire cert is required whenever a material change of use occurs. The fees for which will likely cost €6000 - I am so confused! I believed by putting the accommodation/major alteration work on hold we would eliminate the need for the fire cert immediately.

I guess now I am retrospectively questioning the application and require clarification on our original rights/position. Firstly, our application states that we are changing from a guesthouse to a cafe - which in itself requires change of use. If the pub was still open today I believe that converting to a cafe would not require change of use. The pub on the ground floor was in business and operated by our family for 130 plus years. Can an established use right cease by mere non-use ? and if so what is the amount of time which has to elapse before cessation of use occurs. I am trying to emphasise this in an attempt to highlight the importance the sustained commercial unit has had for our family generationally since the 1860's and should continue to have into the future. While I do not wish to reopen a Pub, I am very much hoping to revive and reestablish a commercial shop fronted unit (cafe) on the ground floor thus reinstating the buildings original use. And while it is true that guest accommodation is the buildings most recent 'use' this is contained to the upper floors , the commercial unit on the ground-floor is still very much intact and we feel like the provenance of its original established use (which we are in essence striving to re-instate) has lost its importance when seeking approval to begin trading.

Secondly, failing an argument of cessation of use I have noticed the term 'material' change of use when reading about fire certs. Does the term material however refer to something specific? Are all changes of uses considered material ? Or can you have minor / partial change of use ? I have looked it up and material change seems to refer to 'significant' work. We would like to know if opening the cafe within the existing bar unit on the ground floor constitutes a material change of use ? We are simply looking to open our doors and trade this summer with little or no construction/development work (aside from some decorative work & appropriate health&safety, fire safety requirements). The cafe will sit within the existing bar unit on the ground floor. The emphasis is on the old bar space which tourists and residents love! The cafe offering is light in fare; sandwiches, salads, soups, cakes, coffees, teas - no heavy duty cooking or full service meals - a tea room is probably a fairer description.

We do not dispute the works involved in making the space fire safety compliant which we have allocated budget too or indeed the eventual need for the fire cert when introducing the accommodation unit and making alterations to the building. Its the necessity of the fire cert and disability cert right now before we open the groundfloor cafe that has totally thrown me!

Apologies for the long and detailed post. Any help or guidance on the above would be much appreciated!

Thank you !

Farmwife1

Hi

Just wondering if you got sorted in regard to the dac and fire safety cert? Similar situation here ;{