The 28 day rule for temporary use of land explained

The 28 day rule for temporary use of land sits in Class B of Part 4 of Schedule 2 to the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015. It permits the use of any land for any purpose for not more than 28 days in total in any calendar year, of which not more than 14 days may be for holding a market or for motor car and motorcycle racing, including trials of speed and practising. It also permits any moveable structure provided for that use. The right belongs to the land, it resets on 1 January, and it is easier to lose than most landowners expect.

Three things catch people out: the land must not be a building or within the curtilage of one, the structures have to come down, and the burden of proving how many days were used falls on whoever is relying on the right.

What the allowance permits

Class B authorises a use, not works. Within the 28 days you can run a car boot sale, a wedding reception in a field, a pumpkin patch, a dog show, clay pigeon shooting, a classic car meet, a county show or a paintball weekend, and you can put up marquees, portable toilets, catering units, fencing and a temporary stage to make it happen.

What it does not authorise is a physical alteration to the land. Grading a track, laying a hard surface, forming a new access, building a permanent platform or installing drainage are all development in their own right, and none of them is permitted by Class B. This is also where the right quietly collapses: once the land has been permanently adapted for the activity, the authority can argue that the use is no longer an occasional temporary use of ordinary land and that a material change of use has taken place. The land is expected to go back to doing what it normally does between occasions.

Film-making has its own class. Class E of Part 4 deals with temporary use of land for film-making, and Class B expressly does not cover it, so a location shoot is assessed against the Class E conditions instead.

Camping also moved. A separate class for temporary recreational campsites was added to Part 4 in 2023 with its own day allowance and its own restrictions, so anyone running a seasonal campsite should check that class rather than counting against the 28 days.

The 14 day sub-limit for markets and motor racing

Two activities carry a lower ceiling. No more than 14 of the 28 days may be used for holding a market, or for motor car and motorcycle racing, including trials of speed and practising for them.

The practical consequence is that a market trader cannot run a weekly Saturday market on Class B rights. Fourteen Saturdays takes you to the start of April. After that the use needs planning permission, and a council that has watched the stalls arrive every week will treat the whole operation as a permanent intermittent use rather than a series of temporary ones.

Practising counts against the 14 days in the same way as racing. Motocross sites are the classic enforcement case: the events themselves fall inside the allowance, then the practice sessions in between push the total past it, and the noise complaints give the authority the dates it needs.

Note that the 14 days are part of the 28, not in addition to them. Fourteen days of racing leaves 14 days for everything else.

Counting days across a calendar year

The period is the calendar year, so it resets on 1 January rather than on an anniversary of first use. Each day on which the land is used for the purpose counts as one day, whether the activity ran for an hour or for 14 hours.

The harder question is set-up and clearance. Where marquees, fencing and catering units are standing on the land, the land is being used for the purpose, and an enforcement officer who photographs a half-built marquee on the Thursday before a Saturday event will count the Thursday. Build the count on the conservative assumption that every day with structures on the ground is a used day. A three-day festival with two days of build and one day of strike is six days, not three.

Where several different temporary uses run on the same land, they share the single 28 day allowance. Where the land is in separate ownership or forms separate planning units, the position is different, and the question of what counts as one planning unit is the same analysis that bites on a garden office used as a business premises. Splitting a field on paper to claim two allowances does not work.

Moveable structures and the reinstatement condition

Class B permits the provision of any moveable structure for the purposes of the permitted use. A marquee, a stage on a trailer, portable toilets, temporary stock fencing and a mobile catering unit all qualify.

The condition attached to the class requires that, at the end of the permitted period, any moveable structure provided under Class B is removed and the land reinstated to its previous condition. That is not a formality. A marquee frame left standing through the winter, a container that becomes a store, or a track worn into pasture and left unrepaired each give the authority a straightforward breach of condition, and a breach of condition is enforceable without the authority needing to argue about the use at all.

Moveable means capable of being moved. A structure bolted to a concrete pad, connected to mains services and left in place is a building, and a building needs permission.

Where Class B does not apply

The exclusions matter more than the allowance.

• Land that is a building, or is within the curtilage of a building, is outside Class B altogether. A farmyard surrounded by barns, a pub car park or a hotel lawn may all fall within a curtilage, and the boundary of a curtilage is a question of fact rather than a line on a plan. The same analysis arises in the curtilage limits on garden outbuildings, and it is the single most common reason a Class B claim fails.
• Use as a caravan site is excluded, which pulls in most touring and motorhome arrangements.
• Certain activities on or within a site of special scientific interest are excluded, including markets, motor sport, clay pigeon shooting and war games.
• Display of an advertisement is not covered, and signage needs consent under the advertisement regulations in its own right.
• An Article 4 direction can remove the right for a defined area, and some authorities have made directions covering particular types of temporary use. Check the authority's list of directions before planning a season of events.
• The right is also disapplied where a condition on an existing planning permission removes it, which is common on sites with a history of unauthorised events.

Film-making, as above, is dealt with by Class E rather than Class B.

Licences, highways and food safety alongside

Permitted development deals only with planning. Four other regimes usually apply and none of them is satisfied by the 28 days.

1. Licensing. Alcohol sales, regulated entertainment and late-night refreshment need either a premises licence or a temporary event notice under the Licensing Act 2003. A temporary event notice covers a limited headcount and there are annual caps on how many can be used at one premises, so a full season of events needs a premises licence rather than a pile of notices.
2. Highways. Signage on the verge, a temporary road closure, traffic marshals directing vehicles into a field entrance and any work to a bellmouth all need the highway authority's agreement. An unmanaged entrance onto a national speed limit road is the objection most likely to generate a complaint that brings the planning team out.
3. Food and safety. Food businesses need registration with the environmental health team, and event organisers carry duties under health and safety legislation for structures, crowd movement and electrical installations.
4. Other consents. Tree works where a Tree Preservation Order applies, land drainage consent for anything affecting a watercourse, and a licence from the Environment Agency for certain waste or water activities.

A field used lawfully for 28 days can still be shut down by the licensing authority on the Friday afternoon. Plan the consents in parallel, not in sequence.

Keeping a log that survives an enforcement visit

If the council alleges a breach, the landowner has to show the days used. Nobody remembers. The log is what wins the argument, and it takes five minutes per event.

Record, for every occasion: the date, the purpose, the hours of activity, which days structures were on the land, the approximate number of attendees and vehicles, and a dated photograph of the land on the day before build and the day after clearance. Keep booking confirmations, invoices from marquee hire and any licensing paperwork in the same folder. Keep the running annual total at the front.

Where the activity is near the limit, consider applying for a certificate of lawfulness of a proposed use or development under section 192 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. A certificate is the only formal way to confirm that an intended use is lawful, and it converts an argument about day counts into a determination you can hold.

Enforcement time limits in England were changed by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, so check the current position before relying on the passage of time to make an overrun lawful. This is general guidance rather than legal advice, so check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

Where an overrun means the use needs permission, the case usually rests on noise, highway safety and landscape effect, and a Planning Statement that addresses those three heads directly is the document the case officer reads first.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.