A private menage: siting, surfacing and lighting

A private menage almost always needs planning permission. Levelling ground, laying a membrane and a drainage layer, building up a surface and fencing the result are engineering operations, and engineering operations are development under section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Keeping and exercising horses for pleasure is not agriculture, so the agricultural permitted development rights that cover a farm building do not help.

The exception is a menage inside the residential curtilage of a house, where the hard surface rights for a purpose incidental to the enjoyment of the dwelling can apply. Most arenas sit in a paddock rather than a garden, and a paddock is not curtilage, whatever the deeds say about the extent of the property.

Whether a menage is development, and which use it serves

Two questions come up together, and they have different answers.

The construction of the arena is operational development. Excavation, level changes, drainage, geotextile, sub-base and surface, plus fencing and any lighting, all count. That needs planning permission unless it falls within the household rights inside a curtilage.

The use of the land is a separate matter. Grazing horses on grassland is agriculture. Keeping horses for riding, exercise, schooling or competition is not, so where land has been used for grazing and will now be used for recreational riding, there is a material change of use as well. Most applications for an arena therefore describe both the engineering works and the change of use, and a Planning Statement that addresses only the surfacing misses half the case.

Private recreation against a commercial equestrian use

Councils treat a private arena used by the household quite differently from one used by paying clients. The distinction affects traffic, parking, hours, buildings, and whether the proposal reads as a business in the countryside.

So say plainly what the use will be, and expect a condition tying it down. Common wording restricts use to the occupiers of the dwelling and their immediate family, with no commercial livery, riding school, training or competition use, and no use by members of the public.

That is not a trap. It is a condition you can live with if the use really is private, and it is the reason the application is straightforward. Where the plan is to take liveries later, the honest route is to apply for that now or accept that a further application will be needed, and the line between private and commercial is set out in when horses become a business.

Siting in open countryside and landscape effects

Siting decides most of these applications. Officers are looking at whether a flat rectangle of pale surfacing with post and rail fencing reads as an intrusive feature in the landscape.

What helps:

• a position tucked against existing buildings, a woodland edge or a mature hedge rather than in the middle of a field
• ground that is already close to level, so cut and fill is minimal and there is no raised platform or retaining structure
• alignment with existing field boundaries rather than at an angle to them
• surfacing in a muted colour rather than bright silica sand
• fencing in dark stained timber rather than white plastic
• no spoil bund left on site as a landform, since a heap of subsoil along a boundary is itself development and often the most visible part of the scheme

In a National Landscape or a National Park, or on a site visible from a long distance, a Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment is worth commissioning. In the Green Belt, outdoor sport and recreation facilities can be acceptable where they preserve openness, and the arena surface often does while the fencing, lighting, jump storage and any shelter do not. Deal with each element separately in the submission.

Where an access needs widening or a hedge needs a gap, check the hedgerow position first, because removing a length of countryside hedgerow can require notice under the hedgerow regulations, as explained in hedgerow removal notices and the important hedgerow test.

Surfacing, drainage and run off

A typical build-up is a formation level with a geotextile separator, a granular drainage layer with land drains, a membrane, and a riding surface of silica sand blended with fibre, rubber or a proprietary mix.

Two points matter for the application. The first is what happens to the water. Arena drainage is usually collected in perimeter or herringbone drains and taken to a soakaway, and the design should show where that soakaway is, how big it is, and that it is not going to discharge across a neighbour's land or into a ditch without consent. On a clay site, infiltration may not work and the discharge route needs thinking about properly.

The second is the surface material itself. Rubber crumb and synthetic fibre migrate, and they end up in drains, ditches and watercourses over time. Specifying a contained build-up, with a perimeter kerb or timber edge and a maintenance regime, answers a question the drainage officer may otherwise raise.

Good practice on any site with a slope: cut and fill balanced so no material leaves and no bund remains, with levels shown on a section drawing. That single drawing answers more officer questions than three pages of text.

Floodlighting, curfews and dark landscapes

Floodlighting is where most refusals happen. And it is where most complaints start once an arena is built.

Rural areas fall into the darker environmental zones used in lighting guidance, which means very low permitted vertical illuminance at nearby windows and effectively nothing after the curfew. Design accordingly: columns no taller than needed, asymmetric optics aimed into the arena, full cut-off luminaires with no upward light, warm colour temperature, and shields where a dwelling or a lane is close.

Expect conditions. Hours are the usual control, often limiting use of the lighting to the early evening in winter months, with nothing after a stated time. Also expect the council to ask for a lighting scheme with a luminaire specification and predicted light levels at the nearest dwellings before installation.

There is an ecological dimension as well. Bats commute along hedgerows and woodland edges, and lighting an arena adjacent to one can sever a route. Keeping the light off the boundary vegetation, rather than reducing it slightly, is what the ecologist will ask for.

Fencing, mirrors and ancillary structures

Fencing may be permitted development under the means of enclosure rights, subject to the height limits of 1 m adjacent to a highway and 2 m elsewhere, with tighter rules around listed buildings. Post and rail at 1.4 m usually sits within that.

Everything else needs checking. Arena mirrors on posts, a viewing platform, a jump store, a field shelter moved next to the arena, a horse walker, and a muck store are all separate items, and a council that grants the arena will not accept structures appearing afterwards. List them in the application, even the ones you might not build for two years, or accept that a further application follows.

Conditions commonly imposed

Illustrative example of the set attached to a typical approval for a 40 m by 20 m arena in a paddock behind a house:

1. Use restricted to private purposes by the occupiers of the dwelling, with no commercial or public use.
2. No external lighting except in accordance with a scheme submitted and approved, and no lighting in use after a stated hour.
3. Surfacing and fencing materials and colours as approved, with samples where the council asks.
4. Landscaping, usually hedge planting along the most visible boundary, planted in the first planting season and replaced if it fails.
5. Levels and drainage as approved, with surface water contained on site.
6. No spoil to be retained on site other than as shown on the approved levels drawing.

Read each one before you build. The lighting condition in particular is the one people breach without realising, by adding a floodlight to an approved arena the following winter.

Where the land is agricultural and of good quality, the loss of it is a consideration too, and on larger proposals an Agricultural Land Classification survey may be requested, though for a single private arena that is unusual.

To see which supporting documents an equestrian application is likely to need, enter the postcode on PlanScope.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.