Glamping and campsites: the 60 day rule

Land in England can be used temporarily for camping without a planning application, and since 2023 the general allowance in Part 4 of Schedule 2 to the General Permitted Development Order 2015 has been 60 days in a calendar year rather than 28. That is the campsite permitted development 60 days right in short. What it does not do is authorise a glamping business, because the moment a pod, a shepherd's hut on a base, a shower block or a hardstanding track appears, you have moved from temporary use into operational development, and the right stops covering you.

The 60 days is a useful right for a farm testing whether the market exists. It is a poor foundation for anything you intend to run every summer.

What the temporary use right permits

The right permits the use of land for any purpose for a limited number of days each calendar year, together with the provision on that land of moveable structures for the purposes of that use. Two words carry the weight: use, and moveable.

Use means the activity. Pitching tents, parking touring caravans, running an event: all of these are uses of land. Operational development, defined in section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 as building, engineering, mining or other operations, is not covered at all. Laying a permanent access track is engineering. Pouring a slab is building. Neither becomes lawful because it happened within the 60 days.

Moveable means what it says, and taken away when the use ends. A bell tent qualifies. A timber pod craned onto piers and left in place through the winter almost certainly does not, whatever the supplier's marketing says.

Check the current text of the Order on legislation.gov.uk before relying on any day figure, because Part 4 has been amended several times in recent years and there are sub-limits for particular uses.

How the day count works and what counts as use

The count is of days on which the land is used for the temporary purpose, in each calendar year, and it is the land that carries the allowance rather than each visitor or pitch.

A day on which one tent is pitched counts the same as a day on which forty are. Running Friday to Sunday across a summer uses the allowance fast: fifteen weekends of three days is 45 days, and the August bank holiday plus a shoulder season takes you past 60 before you have finished the school holidays.

Set-up and take-down days are the grey area. If the field is occupied by your marquee frame on the Thursday and cleared on the Monday, it is difficult to argue the land was not in use for the purpose on those days. Keep a dated log with photographs. Where enforcement follows, the burden of showing the use fell within the right sits with you, and a diary written at the time is worth a great deal more than a reconstruction two years later.

There are also lower day limits for certain purposes, so a site that combines camping with markets or motorsport needs the current text read carefully rather than a single number applied to everything.

Conditions attached to the right

Part 4 rights are conditional, and a breach of condition takes the whole use outside permitted development.

The land must be returned to its previous condition at the end of the period. Any moveable structure must be removed. The right does not apply where the land is a building or is within the curtilage of a building, and it is restricted on certain designated land, so a site inside a National Landscape or a Site of Special Scientific Interest needs the position checked before anything is booked.

Article 4 directions can withdraw the right locally. Several authorities in coastal and upland areas have made directions covering temporary camping use, and the only reliable way to know is to ask the local planning authority or search the register of directions on planning.data.gov.uk.

Facilities and structures that fall outside it

This is where most glamping businesses come unstuck. The list of things that are not covered by a temporary use right is longer than most operators expect:

• toilet and shower blocks, whether portable cabins on a permanent base or built structures
• hardstanding, gravel tracks, passing places and permanent parking areas
• package treatment plants, septic tanks and the drainage runs serving them
• reception buildings, stores, hot tub decks and fire pits set into the ground
• permanent water and electricity connections and the trenching for them
• fixed signage at the entrance

Portable toilets brought in for the period and taken away again are a different matter, and are the usual solution for a short season. The economics of that are unattractive, which is exactly why operators drift into installing something permanent.

Separately, caravans bring their own regime. A site used for stationing caravans normally needs a site licence under the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, and the exemptions in Schedule 1 to that Act, including certificated locations run through exempted organisations, are narrow, and the Act itself is the place to check them rather than a summary.

Why glamping pods usually need permission

A glamping pod is sold as a moveable structure and installed as a building. Councils look at how it is fixed, how long it stays, whether it has services connected, and whether it is capable of being moved without dismantling.

Where a pod sits on a concrete or screw pile base, is connected to foul drainage and electricity, and remains in place year round, an authority will treat it as operational development requiring planning permission. Arguing otherwise on the basis that it has no foundations rarely succeeds when the pod has not moved in three years.

The honest route for a seasonal business is a full planning application for change of use of the land together with the structures and infrastructure. The alternative honest route is to run on a short seasonal basis, with tents and portable facilities, within the day limit.

An illustrative case makes the point. A farm places four pods in a paddock in April, connects them to a new treatment plant, and removes them each January to stay inside the 60 days. The removal of the pods does nothing about the treatment plant, the track or the hardstandings, all of which are operational development that took place without permission. This example is illustrative rather than drawn from a decided case, but it is the pattern enforcement officers describe.

Access, drainage and waste evidence

Whichever route you take, three technical questions arrive early, and they are the same ones that come up for any rural diversification scheme.

Access is usually first. The highway authority will want visibility splays measured at the junction and an assessment of whether the existing farm access can take touring caravans or trailers. A single track lane with passing places is not automatically a refusal, but it changes what the authority expects to see.

Foul drainage comes second. Rural sites rarely have a mains connection, so the application needs to show how waste will be treated, and a package treatment plant discharging to ground normally needs a permit or an exemption from the Environment Agency alongside the planning permission.

Water supply, refuse storage and collection arrangements complete the set. Where the land is agricultural, the quality of the land itself may be raised, which is where an Agricultural Land Classification survey becomes relevant, particularly if the site is on best and most versatile land. In a National Landscape or on a prominent valley side, expect the council to ask for a Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment dealing with the pods, the lighting and the parked cars together.

Planning for a permanent site

A permanent site is a change of use application supported by a Planning Statement that engages with rural economy policy in the development plan and with the National Planning Policy Framework's support for sustainable rural tourism.

The arguments that succeed tend to share a shape: the enterprise supports an existing farm business, the site is well screened or capable of being screened, the access works, and the scale is modest relative to the holding. The arguments that fail are the ones where the tourism use is the whole business and the farm is incidental, or where lighting and hot tub noise affect a neighbouring dwelling.

Structures and boundary treatments matter more than owners expect. The same question of what counts as development that decides whether a pod needs permission also decides whether a field shelter is development, and the answer turns on permanence and attachment in both cases. Lighting is the other recurring theme, with the same evidence expected as for floodlighting on a ménage. If the land is tenanted or in multiple ownership, get the ownership certificates and agricultural holdings notices right before submission, because a wrong certificate can invalidate the application.

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 or works are lawful. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a camping or glamping proposal is likely to need.