Reports for a caravan storage compound on farmland

Caravan storage compound planning reports have one job that nobody expects: proving that rows of white boxes in a field can be made to disappear from the surrounding landscape. Everything else in the bundle is routine. The landscape case is the one that decides the application, and the second most common refusal reason is surface water, because a compacted gravel compound sheds water at a rate the field never did.

Storing unoccupied touring caravans is not the same as a caravan site in the licensing sense, which helps. It is still a material change of use of agricultural land, which means an application.

Whether the use is development, and which route applies

Using a field to store caravans is a material change of use from agriculture, so it is development under section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and needs permission. The hardstanding is a separate matter: laying a compacted surface is an engineering operation and is development in its own right.

Two rights sometimes get raised and neither usually helps. Part 4 Class B of the General Permitted Development Order allows temporary use of land for any purpose for up to 28 days in a calendar year, which does not cover a storage business operating from autumn to spring. And Part 3 Class R allows the change of use of an agricultural building to a flexible commercial use including storage, subject to a cumulative floorspace limit, which applies to buildings rather than to open land.

The licensing point is worth getting right because it saves an argument. A site licence under the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 is concerned with the use of land as a caravan site for human habitation. Storage of unoccupied units does not require one, and the planning permission should make that distinction explicit through a condition prohibiting occupation.

Where the land is in the Green Belt the analysis changes substantially. Open storage is not among the forms of development the national Framework treats as appropriate, so the case has to address openness and, if the development is inappropriate, very special circumstances. Our note on which reports an equestrian use in the Green Belt needs sets out how that argument is built.

Landscape and visual effect of stored units

Caravans are pale, reflective, rectilinear and uniform, and they sit at roughly the height of a hedge. That combination makes them visible from much further away than their size suggests, particularly in winter light and from higher ground.

A landscape appraisal for a compound has to do four things that a generic one does not.

• Assess winter views, when the hedgerows that provide the screening are not in leaf. Summer photography on its own invites a request to resubmit.
• Assess views from above. Compounds in valleys are read from the valley sides, and a two metre hedge screens nothing from a footpath 30 metres higher.
• Treat the stored units as the receptor's experience rather than the compound boundary. The question is whether caravans are seen, not whether the fence is.
• Show the proposed planting at establishment rather than at maturity, with a management commitment for the period in between.

A Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment is proportionate for larger compounds or sensitive settings, and a shorter landscape appraisal is often enough for a small compound against existing farm buildings. Siting matters more than planting. A compound tucked against an existing building group, using the building mass as the screen, succeeds where a compound in the middle of a field with a new hedge around it does not.

Single-tier storage is also a design decision with landscape consequences. Stacked units read as a wall.

Surfacing, drainage and runoff

A compacted surface over a field changes the runoff regime, and a lead local flood authority will ask for the calculations.

What the authority wants to see is that post-development runoff does not exceed the greenfield rate for the relevant return periods, including an allowance for climate change taken from the Environment Agency's published figures. The allowances are revised, so use the current ones and say which version you have used.

Workable approaches for a compound, in rough order of preference:

1. A permeable surface such as a cellular confinement system filled with gravel over a free-draining sub-base, with infiltration tested rather than assumed.
2. Infiltration to a soakaway, sized on measured permeability, where ground conditions and groundwater levels allow.
3. Attenuation to a basin or swale with a controlled discharge at the greenfield rate, where infiltration is not viable.
4. A positive connection to a watercourse, which needs the consent of the relevant authority and is the hardest to secure.

Avoid an impermeable surface unless there is a reason, because it forces the whole drainage design into attenuation. A Drainage Strategy should include the infiltration test results, the sizing calculations, a maintenance regime and a plan showing where water goes in an exceedance event.

Silt is the operational issue nobody plans for. Caravans arrive muddy, gravel migrates, and the outfall from a compound silts up within two seasons unless the maintenance plan deals with it.

Access, visibility and towing manoeuvres

A car towing a caravan is a long vehicle with poor rearward visibility, and the highway authority assesses the access on that basis rather than as a field gate.

Four items decide it. Visibility splays in both directions, measured and shown on a drawing with any hedge to be cut back identified. A gate set back far enough that a towing vehicle can stand clear of the carriageway while it is opened. Swept path analysis for the longest expected combination, both entering and leaving. And turning within the site, because reversing a caravan onto a rural road is the manoeuvre the authority will refuse to accept.

On a single-track lane, passing places become part of the application. The number of vehicle movements is modest and concentrated at the start and end of the season, which is a point worth making with the operator's own booking pattern rather than with trip rate data that does not fit the use.

Agricultural land classification and the loss of farmland

National policy protects the best and most versatile agricultural land, which means Grades 1, 2 and 3a. The published provisional maps do not split Grade 3 into 3a and 3b, so a site shown as Grade 3 tells you nothing decisive.

Where the provisional mapping shows Grade 3 and the site is of a size the authority cares about, a site-specific survey is the only way to resolve it. An Agricultural Land Classification survey involves soil augering and profile description against the published grading guidelines, and it needs a soil scientist. Surveys can be done at most times of year but not when the ground is waterlogged, so programme it accordingly.

There is a reasonable argument available for storage compounds that does not depend on the grade: the use is reversible. A gravel compound can be lifted and the land returned to agriculture, which is not true of a building. Make that argument with a restoration condition offered, rather than leaving the authority to assume permanent loss.

Security lighting in a dark landscape

Rural compounds want lighting and rural landscapes cannot absorb it. The environmental zones in the Institution of Lighting Professionals guidance on obtrusive light treat intrinsically dark landscapes and rural areas as the most sensitive categories, with the tightest limits on light intrusion, luminaire intensity and upward light.

The design that gets approved tends to share these features: columns no taller than needed, full cut-off luminaires with no upward component, a warm colour temperature, aiming within the compound boundary with the calculated spill shown at the site edge, and presence detection with a curfew rather than dusk to dawn operation.

A Lighting Assessment should include an isolux plot at the boundary and at the nearest dwelling, and it should state the curfew hours being offered. Councils usually expect a suitably qualified author for this work and professional review is strongly advised.

Dark corridors matter for bats. Hedgerows are commuting routes, and lighting a hedge line severs it as effectively as removing it, so keep the lighting off the boundary vegetation entirely.

Ecology, biodiversity net gain and the conditions to expect

A Preliminary Ecological Appraisal establishes the habitats present and whether further survey is needed. Hedgerow removal for an access is the trigger that most often brings ecology into a compound application.

Mandatory biodiversity net gain applies to planning permissions, with a de minimis exemption for development affecting less than 25 m² of on-site habitat and less than 5 m of hedgerow. A compound over a field will exceed that, so expect a Biodiversity Net Gain Assessment using the statutory metric. That metric must be completed by a competent person under the Environment Act 2021 regime, and the biodiversity gain plan is approved by the authority, so an AI-assisted draft is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute.

Expect conditions limiting the number of caravans, fixing the storage area on an approved plan, prohibiting stacking, prohibiting residential occupation, prohibiting repairs, servicing or sales on site, controlling lighting hours, requiring landscape management for a defined period and requiring restoration if the use ceases. A temporary permission is common for a first application and is not a bad outcome, because a renewed permission on a compound that has caused no complaints is a much easier application.

Browse all 66 report types to see what a rural change of use pack contains. This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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