IT is easier and cheaper to upgrade an existing office building than it is to split down the structure to dwellings, thereby having to provide multiple bathrooms and kitchens and comply with all the latest building regulations.

If there really was a genuine demand for high quality offices in York (Lack of office space a worry, November 12) we would have seen all those empty office blocks upgraded to satisfy that market and not turned into flats.

A purpose-built Grade A office block in Eboracum Way has never been fully occupied despite extensive marketing.

City of York Council have repeatedly been asked to provide evidence of their claim that there is a need for office space but have been unable to do so. The threat of damage to York comes not from a lack of office space but rather the dogmatic insistence that new offices must be built, when experience shows the vast majority of existing property owners are opting for major expensive residential conversions rather than cheaper office upgrades.

Objectives aimed at securing projects with big speculative office space would be another foolhardy planning policy.

Recent Permitted Development rules which allow residential conversion of offices outside the normal yoke of a suffocating planning system have added significantly to much needed housing.

Could it be that calls for stopping these rules have little to do with a real need for offices but are rather more of a determination to stop developments going ahead that don’t have to provide Section 106 contributions and “affordable housing”?

Matthew Laverack,

Lord Mayors Walk, York