Part 4 temporary uses: the 28 day rule and event exemptions

The 28 day temporary use permitted development right sits in Part 4 Class B of Schedule 2 to the General Permitted Development Order 2015, and it is more limited than the shorthand suggests. It allows the use of land for any purpose for not more than 28 days in total in any calendar year, of which not more than 14 days may be for holding a market or for motor car and motorcycle racing, including trials of speed and practice. It also permits the moveable structures needed for that use while it lasts.

What it does not do is turn a field into an events venue. Twenty-eight days is the annual ceiling for the whole of the land in question, the allowance resets on 1 January, and the excluded cases catch more sites than owners expect.

What Class B permits and where it stops

Read the class in the order the Order sets it out, as our note on reading the GPDO without getting lost describes: the permission, then the cases where development is not permitted, then the conditions.

The permission covers the use of land, plus moveable structures for the purposes of that use. The structures have to go when the use ends, and a marquee left standing for the season is no longer a moveable structure for a permitted temporary use.

The exclusions are where most enquiries fail:

• Land that is a building, or is within the curtilage of a building. So a farmyard, a barn interior and the land around a dwelling are all outside the class, and the 28 days applies to open land.
• Use as a caravan site, which has its own separate regime.
• Use for the display of an advertisement, which is controlled under the advertisement regulations instead.
• A site of special scientific interest, where the class is withdrawn for motorsport, markets, clay pigeon shooting and war games.

Read the current consolidated text before you rely on any of this, because Part 4 has been amended repeatedly. Temporary extensions to the day count were made during 2020 and 2021 and have since lapsed, and a separate class was added for commercial film-making with its own duration, area and height limits. Anyone working from a note written in 2021 will have the wrong number.

Counting days across a calendar year

The count is by day and by calendar year, not by rolling twelve months, so a use running from late December into January draws on two allowances.

A day counts if the land is used for the purpose on that day. Authorities generally take that to include days spent setting up and clearing away, on the basis that the land is being used for the purpose during those operations, and an owner who assumes that build and break are free is usually the owner who gets an enforcement letter. Ask the authority how it counts before you plan a programme close to the limit.

The 14 day sub-limit for markets and motorsport bites within the 28, rather than in addition to it. Ten market days plus twenty other days is nineteen days over.

One more trap. The right attaches to the land, not to the operator. Two different organisers using the same field draw on the same annual allowance, and a landowner who lets land to several event companies has to keep a single register or lose track.

Markets, car boot sales and motor sport

The class names markets and motor racing expressly because both generate complaints and both had a history of being run at the edge of the rules.

A car boot sale is generally treated as a market for these purposes, so it falls in the 14 day sub-limit. So does a regular farmers' market on open land. Where the intention is a weekly event, the arithmetic fails within four months and a planning application is the only lawful route.

Motorsport includes practice, which catches the informal use of a field for motocross far more often than owners realise. The noise from that use is also the kind an environmental health officer will ask about, so where a temporary permission is being sought a Noise Impact Assessment is usually part of the package rather than an optional extra.

What the right does not cover at all

Four things sit outside Part 4 Class B and have to be dealt with separately.

1. Operational development. Laying a hardcore access track, forming a permanent car park, putting in drainage or erecting a permanent building are building or engineering operations, and no amount of temporary use permits them. This is the single most common reason a lawful 28 day use becomes an unlawful development.
2. Highway matters. A temporary road closure or a traffic order for a special event is made under the road traffic legislation by the highway authority, and access visibility onto a classified road can require its own consent. Where the event generates traffic at a scale the local network notices, expect a request for a Transport Statement.
3. Licensing. Regulated entertainment, alcohol sales and late night refreshment need either a premises licence or a temporary event notice under the Licensing Act 2003, with its own attendance limit and notice period. Planning permission is not a licence and a licence is not planning permission.
4. Other regimes. Environmental permits for waste or water discharge, safety duties for temporary structures and crowds, and protected species obligations all apply in their own terms.

Records to keep

Enforcement of the 28 day rule is almost always evidential. The authority alleges a use beyond the allowance, and the owner has to show otherwise.

Keep a single register for the land, dated, listing every day used, the purpose, the operator and whether the day fell in the market and motorsport category. Add booking confirmations, invoices, photographs with metadata, and the dates structures were erected and removed. Keep it for at least as long as the enforcement time limit, and note that those limits in England were changed by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, so check the current position rather than working from the old four year and ten year shorthand.

The register does a second job. When you do come to apply for a temporary or permanent permission, a documented history of managed events with no complaints is the best evidence you will ever have.

Where a temporary permission is the answer instead

Once the pattern of use exceeds the allowance, apply. A temporary planning permission is granted with a condition under section 72 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 requiring the use to be discontinued and the land restored at the end of a stated period, and authorities use it routinely for uses they want to test rather than commit to.

The application is not onerous, but it does need to answer the questions a rural events proposal always raises. A short Planning Statement should address the number and timing of events, hours, attendance, parking and access, noise management, lighting, sanitation and waste, and the restoration of the land afterwards. Where the site is in the Green Belt, a National Park or an area of outstanding natural beauty, the effects on openness and on the character of the countryside need addressing directly rather than by assertion.

Two drafting points. Ask for the period you actually need, because a one year permission on an event business is unfinanceable and a five year permission is normal. And be specific about numbers, because a permission for "occasional events" invites a dispute about what occasional means.

Illustrative example

A landowner runs a car boot sale on 12 Sundays a year on a five acre field, plus a two day charity fete and a one day vintage vehicle gathering. The car boot days fall in the 14 day market sub-limit, so 12 of the 14 are used. The fete and the gathering use three of the remaining days in the 28 day total. The arithmetic works. Adding a second vehicle gathering with practice laps would engage the motorsport limb, which shares the same 14 days, and the 14 are nearly spent. This example is illustrative and the way your authority counts build and break days may change the result.

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 191 or 192 of the 1990 Act is the only formal way to confirm that a use is lawful.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a temporary or permanent events use on your land is likely to need.

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