Glamping and camping: the routes to a lawful site

Glamping planning permission is not one question but three, and a rural owner needs to work out which route the business actually fits before spending anything. The temporary use right in the General Permitted Development Order supports a short season with no structures. An exempted organisation certificate supports a small standing site. Full permission supports everything else, and anything with a fixed building needs it regardless.

Choosing the wrong route is the most expensive mistake in rural diversification. A pod delivered in March and craned onto a concrete pad is operational development on the day it lands, whatever the 28 day calendar says.

The temporary use right and how the days are counted

Part 4 of the General Permitted Development Order permits the temporary use of land for a limited number of days in any calendar year. It has always been the mainstay of festivals, car boot sales and pop-up campsites.

Four points decide whether it works for a campsite.

The count attaches to the land, not to each pitch. Twenty tents on one field for one weekend uses the same allowance as one tent.

A day is a day. If a tent is on the field at any point during a 24 hour period, that period is used up, and councils count the days that structures are present rather than the days people sleep there.

The right does not extend to land within the curtilage of a building, which catches a paddock that the council treats as part of a farmhouse garden.

And the number of days has been changed by amendment more than once, including temporary increases that later expired. Check the current wording of Part 4 before you build a season around it, because a plan written against a superseded figure is worthless.

Enforcement here is straightforward for a council. Aerial imagery, dated social media posts and booking sites make the day count easy to establish, and an owner who has exceeded it has no good answer.

Certificated sites through an exempted organisation

The Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 sets out cases where the use of land as a caravan site does not need a site licence, and the General Permitted Development Order gives a matching planning right for those circumstances. One of them covers land certificated by organisations that the government has exempted.

For a farm this is often the neatest answer. The certificating body sets standards for spacing, sanitation, water and management, inspects the site, and the pitch numbers are small. There is no planning application, no fee and no committee.

The limitations are real. Pitch numbers are low, the certificate is tied to the organisation and can be withdrawn, and the right covers the use of land rather than any structure you put on it. It suits touring caravans and motorhomes better than fixed glamping units.

When a structure becomes development

This is where most glamping schemes fall over.

Siting a caravan on land is a use of land. Erecting a building on land is an operation. The two are controlled differently, and the statutory definition of a caravan is what separates them: broadly, a structure designed or adapted for human habitation, capable of being moved from one place to another as a whole, and within stated size limits.

So a bell tent is not a building. A shepherd's hut on wheels, delivered whole and movable, is arguable and often falls within the caravan definition. A timber pod craned onto a concrete raft, plumbed into a treatment plant and never moved again is a building. A safari tent on a raised timber deck is usually treated as a building because of the deck.

Judges and inspectors look at three things: size, permanence and physical attachment. Wheels that have rusted into the ground after three seasons carry very little weight.

If the units are buildings, plan for full permission from the start. Retrofitting a planning application to a site already built out invites refusal on the merits and gives the council an easy enforcement case.

What a full application turns on

Councils rarely refuse glamping on principle. National policy supports sustainable rural tourism and diversification of agricultural businesses. Refusals come from four recurring issues.

Landscape effect is first, and it is worse than owners expect because the units are pale, regular and repeated. Site them against woodland edges and hedge lines rather than in the open, use dark recessive finishes, and avoid a grid. In a National Landscape or National Park, a Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment is normally expected and it should include winter views.

Access is second. A single track lane with passing places and no visibility at the field gate will generate a highway objection whatever the pitch numbers. Deal with the gate, the visibility splays and the internal parking before anything else.

Drainage is third. Package treatment plants near watercourses attract consultation, and the position needs setting out in a Foul Sewage Assessment with percolation testing and the discharge point identified. Composting facilities are acceptable to many councils but need to be described properly rather than assumed.

Lighting is fourth and is the one owners forget. Dark skies are the product being sold, so a scheme with low level bollards, warm colour temperature, shielding and a curfew is both better business and easier to permit. A short Lighting Assessment against the relevant environmental zone answers the objection before it arrives.

The pre-application conversation worth having

Rural tourism proposals benefit more from pre-application advice than almost any other type of small application, because the officer's view on landscape capacity is the thing that decides the scheme and it cannot be predicted from policy.

Take three things to that meeting. A plan showing where the units would sit and what screens them. Photographs from the two or three public viewpoints that matter, taken in winter. And an honest statement of the business, including how many units make it viable, because a scheme that only works at twelve pitches should not be presented as a trial of four.

Ask specifically about the number of units, the acceptability of fixed structures against caravans, and whether the council expects a landscape assessment. Written pre-application advice is not binding, and officers change, so treat it as an indication rather than a decision.

Conditions, licensing and the duties that follow

Expect a permission to carry occupancy conditions preventing use as a sole or main residence, requiring a register of occupiers to be kept and made available to the council, limiting the number and position of units by reference to an approved plan, and in sensitive locations closing the site for part of the year.

Read those conditions before accepting the permission. An occupancy condition that requires 28 day gaps between stays is very different in business terms from one that simply prevents permanent residence.

Then the separate consents. A site licence under the 1960 Act is issued by the council and follows planning permission. Tent camping sites are licensed under public health legislation. Private water supplies are regulated, food businesses must register, and fire risk assessment duties apply to the site as a whole.

Set the whole picture out in a Planning Statement that explains the business, the season, the number of units, the management arrangements and how each of the four recurring issues is dealt with. Applications that read like a business plan with drawings attached do better than applications that read like a set of drawings.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it, and confirm the current wording of the temporary use right on legislation.gov.uk before counting days. To see which documents a diversification scheme is likely to need, check what a site needs from its postcode.

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