Evidence base for a caravan and camping site

A campsite in open countryside is a material change of use, and the camping site planning evidence that carries it has almost nothing in common with a housing application. There is no design argument to make and very little built form. What decides these cases is landscape effect, access, drainage and the credibility of the management regime you offer.

Start by working out whether you need permission at all this year. Part 4 Class B of the GPDO 2015 allows temporary use of land for up to 28 days in a calendar year, and a handful of weekends across a summer can sit inside that. A season running from Easter to October cannot, and using the 28 day allowance repeatedly while operating for longer is the most common route to an enforcement notice.

Permitted development for temporary use and its limits

Three limits catch people out. The days are cumulative across the calendar year rather than per field, the land has to revert to its previous use between uses, and the right does not extend to putting up buildings. A permanent shower block, a hardstanding or a reception hut is development in its own right regardless of how many days the camping runs.

Caravans follow a different route. Part 5 of the same Order grants permission for use of land as a caravan site in the circumstances where a site licence is not required, which takes you back to the exemptions in Schedule 1 to the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960. Those include use within the curtilage of a dwelling, short use by a small number of caravans, and certificated locations operated through exempted organisations. The interaction is fiddly and the detail of the 28 day rules in detail is worth pinning down before you commit to a business model.

The separate caravan site licence

The licence and the planning permission are two different consents from two different teams in the same building. The licence is issued under the 1960 Act, it deals with site layout, spacing between units, fire points, roads, water supply and sanitation, and it cannot be issued unless planning permission for the use exists.

Model standards inform the licence conditions, and the spacing requirements in particular can undo a layout drawn for planning purposes. Get the licensing officer's view on the layout before the planning application is submitted, because a scheme that has to be redrawn for licensing after permission is granted needs a fresh application or a variation.

For tents, licensing sits under public health legislation and practice varies between authorities. Ask rather than assume.

Landscape and visual effects in open countryside

This is where most refusals originate. The units, the cars beside them, the access track, the toilet block, the site lighting and the seasonal clutter are all new elements in a landscape whose character the local plan protects.

In a National Landscape or National Park, or where the site is prominent from a public right of way or a ridge, a proportionate Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment following the GLVIA3 approach is the right document. On a modest site in a less sensitive setting, a shorter landscape appraisal with photographs from the public viewpoints will do, provided it deals honestly with winter views.

Practical moves that change the assessment:

• Site units against existing field boundaries and woodland edges rather than in the middle of a field.
• Keep the units below the skyline when seen from the nearest public footpath.
• Specify muted colours and natural materials, and condition them.
• Use grass reinforcement rather than tarmac for internal circulation.
• Set the car parking away from the units so vehicles do not dominate views.
• Restore the field in the closed season where a seasonal condition applies.

The same discipline applies to pods. Where the proposal is closer to structures than tents, a ten pod glamping site has a different evidence base again, because the units are permanent and the visual effect is year round.

Foul drainage and water supply

Drainage is the technical issue that most often stalls a rural application, and the numbers are driven by peak occupancy rather than average use. A site with 30 pitches and a shower block generates a real load on an August weekend.

Where a public sewer is available, a connection is the straightforward answer and the undertaker will confirm capacity. Where it is not, a package treatment plant discharging to ground has to satisfy the Environment Agency general binding rules, or hold an environmental permit where the rules cannot be met, and the design needs percolation testing at the proposed drainage field location. A Foul Sewage Assessment setting out the load calculation, the plant specification, the discharge point and the maintenance regime answers the question properly.

Water supply deserves a paragraph too. A private borehole or spring supply serving a campsite becomes a regulated private water supply, and the environmental health team will want to see sampling arrangements. A mains connection needs a capacity enquiry to the undertaker, which on a rural lane can take months.

Flood risk is worth checking at the outset. Holiday and short let caravan and camping sites sit in the more vulnerable category in the flood risk vulnerability classification, so a site in Flood Zone 2 or 3 needs a Flood Risk Assessment, a sequential test and a warning and evacuation plan that names who does what when a flood warning is issued.

Access, visibility and internal circulation

Rural access is judged on visibility splays against the actual approach speeds, not the posted limit. Measure recorded speeds where the lane is fast, and expect the highway authority to ask for splay dimensions from the relevant design standard, with any hedge or bank within the splay cut back and kept low by condition.

On single track lanes, the questions are passing bays, the ability of two cars towing caravans to pass, and the visibility at field gate accesses along the route. Trip generation is usually modest and seasonal, which helps, but arrival and departure patterns are concentrated on Friday and Sunday afternoons and a Transport Statement should say so rather than quoting an average day.

Internally, keep circulation legible, provide turning space for a car and caravan, and show refuse storage and collection arrangements. A site that cannot be served by the collection vehicle will be told to bring bins to the highway.

Ecology and seasonal disturbance

A preliminary ecological appraisal is the first step on almost any greenfield site, and on a campsite the interest is usually in the boundary features rather than the field: hedgerows, mature trees, ponds, ditches and any building that might hold bats or nesting birds.

Two timing issues matter. Survey seasons are fixed, so a hedgerow or botanical survey in December will not satisfy anyone. And recreational disturbance is a genuine planning issue where the site lies near a designated site, particularly heathland with ground nesting birds or a coastal site with wintering waterfowl, where dogs off leads are the mechanism the ecologist will be asked about.

Biodiversity net gain applies to most planning permissions, so the habitat baseline needs to be surveyed in the growing season and the gain plan approved before development begins. The de minimis exemption is narrow, and a change of use across a whole field will not usually meet it.

Lighting and dark skies

Lighting is the detail that turns a supportive parish council hostile. The default for a countryside campsite should be minimal fixed lighting: low level bollards or path markers at the toilet block and nowhere else, warm colour temperature, full cut-off optics, and a curfew.

Where the site is in or near a National Landscape, a National Park or an area with a dark sky designation, a Lighting Assessment against the environmental zones in the institution of lighting professionals guidance is expected, with predicted vertical illuminance at the nearest sensitive receptors and the sky glow contribution addressed. Offer a lighting condition with a maximum luminaire specification and hours of operation.

Conditions on occupancy and season

Expect, and propose, a tight package: a defined open season, a maximum number of pitches and units, removal of units outside the season, a prohibition on permanent residential occupation, a maximum stay per party, approved external materials and colours, a landscape scheme with a management period, an external lighting condition and a restriction on the siting of any additional structure.

Drafting them yourself does two things. It shows the authority the use will stay recreational, and it stops you inheriting a condition written for a different site that makes the business unworkable.

PlanScope drafts the Planning Statement, landscape narrative, foul sewage and lighting documents for a rural leisure scheme from your site data, with a flag inserted wherever a survey figure such as a percolation rate has not been supplied. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required, and ecology survey work must be done by a suitably qualified ecologist.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

Enter the site postcode on PlanScope to see which of all 66 report types a camping or caravan proposal is likely to need.