Oil tanks, gas cylinders and bin stores in a front garden

Put a domestic oil tank, a bulk liquefied petroleum gas vessel or a bin store in your front garden and the permitted development rights you were counting on fall away. Class E of Part 1 of Schedule 2 to the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 covers containers used for domestic heating purposes for the storage of oil or liquid petroleum gas, along with incidental buildings and enclosures such as bin and cycle stores. It does not allow any of them on land forward of a wall forming the principal elevation of the original dwellinghouse. That one condition is what turns an oil tank front garden planning question into a householder application.

What Class E actually permits

Class E sits in the same part of the Order as extensions and outbuildings, and it treats a heating oil tank as a species of outbuilding. The container has to be within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse, used for domestic heating, and incidental to the enjoyment of the house. A tank serving a separate holiday let, a workshop run as a business or a neighbouring property is outside the class.

The dimensional limits are short enough to check against a tape measure.

Two of those catch people out. The 3,500 litre ceiling is a capacity figure, not a fill level, so a 4,000 litre tank filled to two thirds is still outside the class. And the half-curtilage test counts every shed, greenhouse and store already there, which on a small modern plot with a garden office is often already close to the line.

Flats and maisonettes have no Part 1 rights at all, so a communal bin store at the front of a converted terrace needs permission whatever its size.

The front garden bar and the 20 metre highway test that no longer applies

A lot of material still in circulation says a tank may go in front of the house provided it is either no nearer the highway than the original house or at least 20 metres from it. That was the wording of the 1995 Order. It was replaced in October 2008 by the current test, which has nothing to do with distance from the road: the question is whether any part of the tank or store would sit on land forward of a wall forming the principal elevation.

The principal elevation is normally the front of the house, the one with the main architectural emphasis and usually the front door. It is not automatically the elevation facing the highway. On a corner plot a house can have a principal elevation to one road and a side elevation to the other, and on article 2(3) land Class E also bars anything between a side elevation and the boundary of the curtilage. So the corner plot that looks like it has two front gardens often has the least room of all.

Illustrative example: a 1930s semi with a 6 metre front garden and a side passage too narrow for a tank. The rear garden slopes away from the house, which makes the fill point hard to reach with a tanker hose from the street. The owner wants the tank beside the front bay. Class E does not cover it, and the honest options are a householder application for the frontage position, a bunded tank in the rear garden with an extended fill line brought to a lockable cabinet at the boundary, or a switch of fuel. All three have been used. Only the first needs planning permission.

Bunding, pollution prevention and building control

Planning and pollution control answer different questions here, and the planning officer will not usually deal with bunding. Domestic oil storage of 3,500 litres or less at a private dwelling sits outside the Control of Pollution (Oil Storage) (England) Regulations 2001, which is why a householder tank does not need the secondary containment those regulations demand of commercial storage.

Building control does take an interest. Approved Document J of the Building Regulations covers fuel storage alongside combustion appliances, setting out fire separation distances between a plastic tank and nearby buildings or boundaries and the circumstances in which a bunded tank is expected, including where a spill could reach a drain, a watercourse or a well. Verify the figures against the current edition before you fix a position, because the separation distances drive the layout more than planning policy does.

Where the site is in a groundwater source protection zone or close to a watercourse, a bunded tank is the sensible default whether or not anyone insists on it. Say so in the application and the drainage objection tends not to arrive.

Bin and cycle stores, and the dimensions that decide the design

A wheeled bin store fails more often on internal clearance than on planning policy. A standard 240 litre wheeled bin is a little over a metre tall and needs roughly 0.6 m by 0.75 m of floor, and the lid has to open, so an enclosure deep enough for the bin is rarely deep enough for the bin in use. Two bins, a food caddy and a recycling box in one store pushes the footprint past 2 m wide before any wall thickness.

Cycle storage for two adult bikes wants about 1.9 m by 0.9 m internally if the bikes stand upright and the door swings clear of the path. Check what your council actually issues, because container sizes differ between authorities and the store you build has to suit the bins you are given rather than a catalogue figure.

For a single house the store is usually incidental and covered by Class E if it is behind the principal elevation. For a conversion to flats or an HMO, a store is normally required by local plan policy, it will almost always be in the frontage because that is where the collection point is, and it forms part of the application. Expect the design officer to ask for it on the elevations rather than as a note.

Conservation areas, Article 4 directions and listed buildings

On article 2(3) land, which takes in conservation areas, National Landscapes, National Parks, the Broads and World Heritage Sites, Class E is cut back twice over. Nothing may sit between a side elevation and the boundary, and anything more than 20 metres from a wall of the house is limited to 10 m² of ground coverage in total.

An Article 4 direction can remove Class E altogether, which several authorities have done across their older residential areas. Check the designation layer for the address before you design anything, and ask the authority for the text of the direction rather than relying on a map, because directions vary in what they withdraw.

Listed buildings bring a separate consent. A tank or store within the curtilage can affect the setting of the listed building and may require listed building consent where it involves works to a curtilage structure such as a boundary wall. Where the frontage of a listed house is involved you will need a Heritage Statement setting out the significance of the building and what the proposal does to it. The same logic applies to rendering or cladding a house, where the constraint is the designation rather than the dimensions.

Screening that satisfies the design officer

Case officers refuse frontage tanks on appearance, not on principle. Three things tend to carry a frontage scheme. Set the tank behind an existing boundary feature so it reads as part of the garden rather than as plant. Match the enclosure to the materials already on the plot, which on a brick frontage means brick piers and a timber infill rather than a run of fence panels. And keep the enclosure lower than the boundary wall where you can, because a store that breaks the line of a front wall is the thing neighbours notice.

New screening may need permission in its own right. Part 2 Class A allows a wall, fence or other means of enclosure up to 1 metre above ground level where it is adjacent to a highway used by vehicular traffic, and 2 metres elsewhere, so a 1.5 metre screen across a front boundary is development even though the thing it screens might not be.

Evergreen planting in front of the enclosure helps with the officer and with the neighbours. It does not help with a tanker driver who needs to see the fill point.

What to show on the block plan

Validation failures on these applications are nearly always drawing failures. The frontage of a house is a small space and the officer has to be able to see that what you propose fits in it.

1. A block plan at 1:200 or 1:500 with a north point, the tank or store drawn to scale, and dimensions to the nearest boundary and to the line of the principal elevation.
2. The fill point, the vent and the route the delivery hose will take from the kerb, with the bund if there is one.
3. Existing and proposed hard surfacing, with permeability stated, because a new run of impermeable paving in a frontage is separate development under Class F.
4. Elevations of the enclosure showing materials, height against the boundary wall and how the lid or door opens.
5. Screening, with species and planting height at the time of planting rather than at maturity.

Where the frontage position needs justifying in policy terms, a short Planning Statement that explains why the rear garden will not work, what the alternatives were and how the appearance has been handled is worth more than another drawing. Officers deciding a frontage tank are looking for a reason, and a sentence about tanker hose reach is a better reason than an assertion about convenience. The same discipline helps on front extensions, which fail for much the same reasons.

If the tank is replacing a heating system rather than supporting one, look at the alternative before you apply, since air source heat pumps sit under a different class with its own siting conditions and may avoid the frontage problem altogether.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it, and remember that a Lawful Development Certificate under section 192 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 is the only formal way to confirm that works would be lawful without permission.

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