It would have been naïve to assume that, having been forced to confront the findings of the independent report on the outcomes of office-to-residential permitted development rights, the government would have thrown up its hands and admitted that it had all been an error of judgment. But it was remarkably clumsy to announce new PDRs on the very day that the damning report was published.

That was back in July. The report did elicit a commitment to require all habitable rooms achieved through PDR to have a window and daylight; something that the vast majority of people would assume we could take for granted – and until PDR took off, we could. Months later it is still not clear how much daylight is required, whether it can be from a rooflight or borrowed from another room, and whether it needs to be openable.

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