Opening a street food yard or market

A street food yard with several independent traders almost always needs planning permission, and the application turns on three things: what the site's lawful use is, how much odour several kitchens produce together, and how loud two hundred people in a yard are at 10pm. Street food market planning permission is rarely refused on the principle of the use. It is refused on cumulative odour and on noise breakout to nearby flats.

The 28 day temporary use right is the route most operators try first, and for markets it is 14 days rather than 28. That is enough to test a site and not enough to run a business.

Establishing the lawful use of the site

Start with what the site is lawfully used for now, because that determines whether anything has changed in planning terms. A surface car park, a yard attached to a warehouse, a vacant plot cleared of buildings and a former builders' merchant all have different lawful uses, and some of them are sui generis.

Get the planning history from the authority's register. Look for the last permission that granted the use, any conditions restricting hours, deliveries or activities, and whether earlier temporary permissions have come and gone. Where there is no decision notice, the lawful use may rest on long use, in which case a certificate under section 191 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 is the way to establish it.

The reason this comes first is that a change from a car park to a food yard is a material change of use and needs permission, whereas intensification within an existing food and drink use may not. The two look identical on the ground and are treated quite differently.

Which use class a yard with several traders falls into

There is no use class for a market, so an open market operation is sui generis. Food and drink sold for consumption on the premises falls within Class E(b). Hot food sold principally for consumption off the premises is sui generis, as is a drinking establishment.

A typical street food yard combines all three: traders selling food eaten at communal tables, some takeaway trade, and a bar. The honest description is a sui generis mixed use, and that is how most applications are framed. Describing it as a Class E(b) restaurant to avoid the complication tends to backfire, because the conditions the authority then imposes will not fit the operation, and a condition that does not fit is a condition you will breach.

Say what the operation actually is. Number of trading units, maximum covers, whether alcohol is sold, whether music is played, hours of trading by day of week, and whether the yard is covered. An application described precisely can be conditioned precisely.

Temporary use rights and the 14 day market limit

Part 4 of Schedule 2 to the General Permitted Development Order permits the temporary use of land for any purpose for not more than 28 days in total in any calendar year, together with any moveable structure needed for that use. For use as a market, the allowance within that total is 14 days.

The exclusions matter more than the allowance. The right does not apply to a building, nor to land within the curtilage of a building, which rules out a great many urban yards that sit behind or beside a structure. It is also restricted on sites of special scientific interest for certain uses, and it cannot authorise an advertisement that would breach the advertisement regulations.

Used properly, the right is a testing tool. Run the yard for a season within the allowance, log complaints, measure noise at the nearest facade, record how traders actually vent their kitchens, and then apply for permanent permission with real data instead of predictions. The same progression from temporary use to a permanent consent is covered in the note on barn wedding venues, temporary use and permanent change.

Two cautions. The 28 days is per calendar year and is cumulative across all temporary uses of that land. And the temporary extension of the allowance that applied during the pandemic has expired, so check the current wording of Part 4 rather than relying on a figure from 2021.

Odour from several kitchens at once

This is the issue that sinks applications. One kitchen with a properly specified extract is manageable. Eight trailers each venting at head height into a courtyard enclosed on three sides is not, and no amount of management conditions will fix a layout that recirculates cooking odour into residential windows.

The assessment follows a risk-based approach: establish the sensitivity of the nearest receptors, the distance to them, the scale and type of cooking, and then specify abatement proportionate to the risk. Typical abatement runs from grease filtration alone, through carbon filtration, to electrostatic precipitators and ultraviolet or ozone treatment for high-risk cases.

Design the ventilation strategy at the layout stage:

• A common extract spine with a single discharge point, terminating above the roof line of surrounding buildings and clear of openings, rather than individual flues at low level
• Trader connections designed for the worst-case cooking type you will permit, not the one your anchor trader uses
• Fixed abatement owned and maintained by the operator, not left to each trader
• A maintenance and filter replacement regime capable of being conditioned and audited
• Separation and screening between the cooking line and the nearest residential facade

Put the strategy in a ventilation and extraction statement with a specification and a flue route drawing. An environmental protection officer reading a generic statement with no discharge height will object, and that objection is hard to recover from at committee.

Noise from patrons, music and plant

Three sources, three methods, and the common error is to assess only the third.

Plant noise, meaning extract fans, refrigeration and any generator, is assessed against the method in BS 4142:2014+A1:2019, comparing the rating level with the background sound level at the nearest receptor. That is the familiar part, and the refrigeration side of it is covered in the note on cold stores and refrigeration plant noise.

Patron noise is not industrial or commercial sound in the BS 4142 sense, so it is assessed by measured absolute levels, by comparison with the existing acoustic climate and by professional judgement. The variables are the number of people, whether the yard is enclosed or open, the reflective surfaces around it, and the hours. A hard-surfaced yard with brick walls on three sides and a glazed canopy is an amplifier.

Amplified music is a separate question again, and the answer usually lies in setting a limit with a noise limiter, restricting external speakers altogether, and relying on the building fabric where the yard is covered. Survey the existing background at the right times of night, not at 3pm on a Tuesday, and present the results in a noise impact assessment that addresses all three sources separately.

Toilets, waste, water and the other regimes

Planning permission is one of several consents, and the others run on their own timetables.

1. A premises licence under the Licensing Act 2003 for alcohol sales, regulated entertainment and late night refreshment, which covers hot food supplied between 11pm and 5am.
2. Food business registration with the authority's environmental health service for every trading unit.
3. Street trading consent under the street trading legislation, where any part of the operation sits on the public highway. On wholly private land it is not required.
4. Building Regulations approval for any permanent structures, drainage and sanitary provision.
5. A trade effluent consent or an agreement with the sewerage undertaker where kitchen waste water volumes are significant, together with grease trap provision.

Sanitary provision is the practical constraint most often underestimated. Work the numbers from the maximum capacity rather than the average, and remember that a yard with no fixed toilets relies on portable units that need servicing, screening and a hardstanding, all of which the authority will want shown on the plan.

Waste is the other one. Several traders generate a surprising volume of packaging, food waste and used oil, and commercial collection is a private contract on a schedule the authority cannot control. Show the store, the capacity calculation and the collection arrangement.

Hours, management and stewarding

Expect conditions, and expect them to be tight on a first permission. Hours of trading separated by day of week, a cut-off for amplified music earlier than the trading cut-off, a limit on external seating after a given time, and a requirement for an approved management plan are all normal.

Write the management plan yourself and submit it with the application rather than accepting a condition requiring one later. It should cover stewarding levels by day and session, dispersal from the site including queue management and taxi arrangements, a complaints line with a named duty manager, litter patrols of the surrounding streets, and a review mechanism. Operators who offer a plan that is specific tend to get the hours they asked for.

A trial period secured by a temporary condition is worth proposing where the authority is nervous. It gives the officer a way to say yes.

The documents a permanent application needs

For a yard of any size on a constrained urban site, the bundle usually comprises a planning statement setting out the use and the policy case, a design and access statement, a noise impact assessment, an odour assessment, a ventilation and extraction statement, a transport statement covering servicing and trip generation, a waste management strategy and a lighting assessment where the yard operates after dark.

Scope it with the authority at pre-application stage, because the list differs between authorities and the validation checklist is local. Submitting without an odour assessment on a site with flats above is the single most common reason these applications stall at validation.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a street food yard on your site is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority, its environmental protection team, the licensing authority and a qualified professional before relying on it. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.