A community orchard and allotments on a field

Whether allotments need planning permission on a field comes down to whether the change from agriculture to community growing is material, and in practice the answer usually turns on everything that arrives with the plots rather than on the growing itself. Digging beds and planting fruit trees in a field already used for farming often changes very little. Thirty sheds, a car park, a water tank, a compost bay and a six-foot deer fence change a great deal.

Community groups taking on a field tend to discover this in the wrong order, after the plots have been marked out and the first shed has gone up.

Whether allotment use is a material change from agriculture

Agriculture is defined in section 336 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and includes horticulture, so growing vegetables on farmland is not in itself a new use. Section 55 makes a material change of use development, and the test is one of fact and degree.

Plots worked by households for their own produce, with paths and nothing else, can sit within the existing agricultural use. The use starts to look different where it brings regular visits by many people, parking, structures across the site, water storage, fencing and an element of recreation. At that point most authorities take the view that a change of use has occurred and expect an application.

An orchard is the easier half. Planting trees is not development, and a community orchard on its own rarely needs permission. The orchard with a car park, a storage container and a composting toilet is a different proposition.

If the group wants certainty before committing, a certificate of lawfulness of proposed use or development under section 192 of the 1990 Act answers the question formally, and costs a fraction of a refused application. That is the only formal route to confirm that something is lawful without permission.

Sheds, greenhouses and structures on plots

This is where schemes come unstuck. Householder permitted development under Part 1 of the General Permitted Development Order applies within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse. An allotment field is not that, so there is no automatic right to a shed on a plot.

Part 6 agricultural permitted development will not help either, because once the use is allotments it is no longer agriculture for those purposes, and Part 6 in any case applies only to agricultural units above a stated area with conditions on siting and prior notification.

The practical answer is to apply for the whole thing at once. Seek permission for the change of use together with a stated maximum number and size of plot structures, a defined position for them, and a materials specification. Councils will normally condition it, and a condition you helped write is better than a condition imposed after a complaint about a shed the size of a garage.

Set out in the application:

• the maximum footprint and height of a shed or greenhouse per plot
• whether plot structures sit at the plot head in a line or scattered
• materials, usually timber with a dark stain rather than plastic or steel
• any communal building, with its floor area and use
• composting bays, water butts and tool stores

A single communal store is usually easier to permit than thirty individual sheds, and it is often what the group actually needs.

Access, parking and the rural lane

Access is the most common refusal reason for rural community schemes. A field gate designed for a tractor twice a year is not a safe access for twenty cars arriving on a Saturday morning, and the highway authority will say so.

Expect to show visibility splays measured from the point of access in both directions, the gate set back from the carriageway so a vehicle can pull clear before opening it, and a surfaced or bound apron for the first few metres to stop mud being carried onto the road. Where the lane is single track with passing places, show where they are.

Parking should be modest and legible. A grass reinforced area for a stated number of cars, with cycle parking and a space for a vehicle with a trailer, reads better than an open field with no layout. Where the site is within walking distance of the village, say how far and by what route, because that is the argument for providing fewer spaces.

Water supply, storage and drainage

Water matters more than the drawings suggest. A mains connection across third party land needs an easement and a quotation from the undertaker, and the figure often surprises groups. Rainwater harvesting from a communal building roof into tanks costs less and reads well, though a shed roof collects less than people expect.

Abstraction from a watercourse or borehole may need a licence from the Environment Agency above the small-volume threshold, so check before designing a system around it.

Drainage is usually simple on a growing site, with permeable surfaces and no significant new hardstanding. Where the parking area is bound or where a building is proposed, a short note on surface water, and in a few cases a Drainage Strategy, covers it. But a site on clay with a history of ponding needs more care, and a group planning any storage pond should read the position on a farm reservoir or irrigation lagoon before digging anything.

Boundary treatment and security

Rabbit and deer fencing is the detail that attracts objections, because it is tall and it is visible for a long way in open countryside. Under Part 2 of the Order, a fence or wall up to 2 metres is normally permitted development outside designated situations, and up to 1 metre where it adjoins a highway used by vehicles, with the usual exclusions for listed building curtilage.

Deer fencing at 1.8 metres in close-boarded timber across a field boundary will be resisted. The same height in post and wire with a hedge planted inside it will usually not be. Where security is the concern, a gated and fenced compound around the communal store with open stock fencing to the field boundary is a proportionate answer.

Green Belt and open countryside policy

In the Green Belt, outdoor recreation and allotments are generally capable of being appropriate development where openness is preserved. Buildings are the problem. A communal store, a composting toilet and a container will be assessed against the Green Belt tests in the National Planning Policy Framework in its August 2026 edition, and the question is whether they are limited facilities for outdoor recreation rather than whether they are useful.

Keep buildings small, low and grouped. A single store, sited against an existing hedge or barn rather than in the middle of the field, with a flat or shallow roof and a dark finish, has a far better chance than a chalet with a veranda.

Outside the Green Belt, in open countryside and in a National Landscape, the questions are landscape character and the cumulative effect of plot paraphernalia. A landscape note with photographs from the nearest public vantage points, plus a planting plan, answers most of it.

Management arrangements and the long term

Councils grant permission more readily where someone is accountable. Submit the group's constitution, the tenancy agreement for plots, the plot rules covering structures and bonfires, and the arrangement for site maintenance. Say what happens if the group folds.

Bonfires and cockerels generate more complaints than anything else on allotment sites. Rules banning both, written into the tenancy, remove two objections before they are made.

A proportionate application for a community group

The bundle for a modest scheme is short. A Planning Statement setting out the use, the policy position and the management arrangements. A site plan with plots, access, parking and structures. A Design and Access Statement where one is required, covering the layout and accessible routes between plots. An ecology note where the field has hedgerows, mature trees or a pond, and a short landscape note where the site is visible.

Nothing in that list needs a consultant for a two-acre field with good access. Where the site is in the Green Belt, in a National Landscape, next to a listed farmstead or on a lane with poor visibility, the specialist input is worth the fee because those are the four things that cause refusals.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Whether a change of use has occurred and what each authority requires varies, so 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. Enter the site postcode on PlanScope to see which documents the field is likely to need.