Farm campsites beyond the 28 day allowance

Farm campsite planning starts with a simple question: how many days a year do you want to operate? Below the temporary use allowance in Part 4 of Schedule 2 to the General Permitted Development Order 2015, you can run a campsite without planning permission, subject to conditions. Above it, you need a full application, and the site stops being a field with tents in it and becomes a tourism business with a highway case, a drainage case and a landscape case to answer.

Two regimes run in parallel, and people routinely deal with only one. Planning controls the use of the land. Caravan site licensing is separate legislation administered by the same council through a different team, and having permission does not give you a licence.

What the temporary use right allows

Part 4 Class B permits the temporary use of land for any purpose for not more than 28 days in a calendar year, together with the provision of moveable structures for that use. A separate right in Part 4, introduced in 2023, allows land to be used as a temporary recreational campsite for a longer period, up to 60 days in a calendar year, subject to its own conditions. Those conditions include a limit on the number of pitches, the provision of toilet and waste facilities, notifying the local planning authority, and exclusions on certain designated and hazardous land.

Part 4 has been amended more than once, so read the current text rather than a summary, and check whether the extended right has been altered or allowed to lapse before you plan a season around it.

What neither right allows:

• Permanent buildings of any kind, including a shower block, a shop or a reception.
• Engineering operations, so a new bound access track, hardstanding pitches, level terracing and drainage works all need permission.
• Any use beyond the day allowance, even for a single extra weekend.
• Use of land that is already subject to a condition removing the right, or an Article 4 direction.

Moveable structures are permitted for the purposes of the temporary use, which covers tents, a portable toilet block, a marquee and a mobile catering unit. It does not stretch to a timber cabin on a concrete base.

Counting the days correctly

The counting is where enforcement cases come from, and the rules are narrower than operators assume.

1. The allowance is per calendar year, not per season, so a site running from August to October in one year and April to June in the next uses two separate allowances.
2. The days are counted per parcel of land, so moving the tents to the next field does not reset the count unless that field is a separate parcel in its own right and the use of the first has ceased.
3. A day on which the land is used at all counts, so a single tent on a Tuesday uses a day.
4. Days when the land is being set up or cleared, with structures in place, are generally counted too.
5. Keep a booking and occupancy log. In an enforcement investigation, the burden of showing the use stayed within the right falls in practice on the operator, and a diary is the evidence.

Where you are already using the same land for another temporary purpose, a point-to-point event or a seasonal market, those days come out of the same allowance.

Where the right is restricted

The temporary use right is not available everywhere or in every circumstance.

An Article 4 direction can remove it, and some authorities have made directions covering camping in sensitive landscapes. A planning condition on an earlier permission can remove it for that land. The extended campsite right excludes specified designated and hazardous land, so check the site against the current wording. And a site within a Site of Special Scientific Interest raises a separate consent question entirely, because camping and vehicle use commonly appear on the list of operations requiring the conservation body's assent.

The right applies in Green Belt and National Landscape locations too. Those designations matter enormously once you move to a permanent application, and an operator who spends three years building a business on the temporary right in a National Landscape may find the permanent case much harder than expected.

Caravan site licensing is a separate regime

If caravans are involved, the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 applies. Land used as a caravan site needs a site licence from the district council, and the council cannot grant a licence without planning permission for the use. Licence conditions cover spacing, roads, fire points, sanitation and hard standings, which is why the licensing standards often dictate the layout more than the planning drawings do.

Schedule 1 to the 1960 Act sets out exemptions. In outline they cover use incidental to a dwellinghouse within its curtilage, a single caravan on land for a very short stay subject to an annual day limit and no other caravan being present, a small number of caravans on holdings above a stated area for a limited number of days a year, sites certified by an exempted organisation, and accommodation for agricultural or forestry workers. Each exemption has precise conditions attached, so work from the Act rather than from a summary, and remember that an exemption from licensing is not an exemption from planning.

Tents are not caravans, so a tent-only campsite needs no caravan site licence. Some authorities license or make byelaws for camping sites under public health legislation, so ask the local environmental health team.

The classification question that catches glamping operators is whether a pod is a caravan. A structure designed or adapted for human habitation and capable of being moved from one place to another, within the statutory size limits, can be a caravan even if it never moves again. A cabin built on foundations is a building, needing planning permission and building regulations approval. Which one you have determines whether you need a site licence and which standards apply.

Facilities buildings and their planning status

Almost every campsite eventually wants a permanent toilet and shower block, and that is where the temporary right runs out.

A facilities building is not agricultural, so Part 6 does not help. It is not a moveable structure, so Part 4 does not help. It needs planning permission in its own right, and once you apply for it the council will consider the whole use, not just the building. That is the moment many temporary sites are effectively regularised, whether the operator intended it or not.

Plan for that sequencing. Applying for the building and the use together, with proper evidence, usually produces a better outcome than applying for a modest block and being asked what the field is being used for.

Portable units on a hardstanding sit in an awkward middle ground: the unit may be moveable, but the hardstanding is an engineering operation. Where the surface is a permeable grid over existing ground with no excavation, the argument is more comfortable than where 200 tonnes of stone have been imported.

Highway and drainage evidence

Two technical items decide most rural tourism applications.

Access and visibility, because a field gate onto a lane was designed for tractors rather than for towing caravans and a hundred car movements a weekend. Expect the highway authority to look at visibility splays, the width of the access, whether vehicles can enter and leave in forward gear, passing places along the approach, and the capacity of the lane. A speed survey often helps where the posted limit overstates actual speeds. Internal circulation, turning space for a motorhome and overflow parking should all be drawn.

Drainage, because foul effluent from showers and toilets has to go somewhere. Where there is no mains connection, a package treatment plant or septic tank needs to comply with the relevant general binding rules or hold a permit, and the discharge point, the drainage field percolation test and the distance to any watercourse or borehole need to be shown. Chemical toilet disposal points need a designed arrangement rather than a gully in the corner of the yard.

Applying for a permanent site

National policy supports sustainable rural tourism and farm diversification where the scale and location are appropriate, and that is the policy hook. The application has to do more than claim it.

Assemble:

• A Planning Statement setting out the diversification case, the policies relied on, the pitch numbers, the season and the management arrangements.
• A landscape appraisal, or a Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment where the site is prominent or in a designated landscape, with viewpoints and a planting scheme.
• A transport note covering access, visibility, trip generation and internal layout.
• A drainage and water supply statement.
• An ecology appraisal where hedgerows, trees or semi-natural grassland are affected.
• A lighting note, because dark skies are a real issue in rural districts and uplighters on an approach track attract objections.

Expect conditions restricting occupancy to holiday use with no permanent residence, limiting the number of pitches, closing the site for part of the year, requiring structures to be removed at the end of each season on a seasonal consent, and controlling external lighting.

Illustrative example: a 96 hectare mixed farm running a tent campsite on the extended temporary right for two seasons, 25 pitches, portable toilets brought in each May. In year three the operator wants to trade from March to October with a permanent facilities block. That needs a full application. The submission moves the pitches from the ridge field to a lower paddock screened by existing hedges, upgrades the access with a 2.4m by 120m splay supported by a speed survey, puts the facilities block against an existing barn, and proposes a package treatment plant with a percolation test. Permission is granted with a seasonal restriction and a holiday occupancy condition.

The wider diversification arguments overlap with those for buildings and workshops, covered in our note on farm diversification workshops and offices, and the mechanics of the temporary right itself are set out in our note on the temporary use right for camping and caravans.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which documents a permanent campsite application is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. A Lawful Development Certificate is the only formal way to confirm that a use is lawful. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.