Siting a shipping container as a site office or store

A shipping container on your land is almost always a building in planning terms, which means siting one is development and needs either planning permission or a permitted development right. The common belief that a container escapes control because it has wheels under it, or because it could be lifted off tomorrow, does not survive contact with the case law. What usually saves a container is Part 4 of the General Permitted Development Order rather than its portability. Part 4 allows temporary buildings needed in connection with building operations for as long as those operations last.

Get the route right at the start. The alternative is a container that has to come off site at the point when you most need it.

Whether a container is a building or a chattel

Section 336 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 defines a building as including any structure or erection and any part of a building. The courts have settled on a three-part test, drawn from rating case law and applied in planning by the Court of Appeal in Skerritts of Nottingham: size, degree of permanence, and physical attachment to the ground.

A 20 foot container scores heavily on the first. It is substantial, it cannot be moved by hand, and it needs plant to place it. Attachment is the weakest limb, because most containers simply sit on blocks or a slab, but attachment alone has never been decisive. In Skerritts a marquee erected for about eight months of each year was held to be a building despite being demountable.

So the realistic position is this. A container placed for a season or more, used as an office, a store or a workshop, is a building. A container delivered, unloaded and taken away within days is not, because it lacks any degree of permanence.

Painting it, cladding it, or putting a door and window in it moves you further towards a building, not away from one.

Temporary buildings on a construction site

Part 4 Class A of the General Permitted Development Order 2015 permits buildings, moveable structures, works, plant or machinery required temporarily in connection with and for the duration of operations being carried out on that land or on adjoining land. This is the right for site cabins, welfare units, secure stores and container offices during a build.

Three limits decide most cases.

The right is tied to operations that are themselves lawful. If the development the container serves needs planning permission and has not got it, Class A does not help. The container is required temporarily and in connection with the works, so a container serving a build that finished two years ago has lost its justification. And the right carries conditions: when the operations are complete, the structure must be removed and any adjoining land used for it must be put back to its previous condition.

There is no stated day or month limit in Class A. The limit is the duration of the operations, which is why a container on a self-build plot where work has stalled is exposed. A long gap in activity invites the argument that the operations have ceased.

Part 4 Class B is the separate right people usually mean when they say "the 28 day rule". It allows the temporary use of land for any purpose for up to 28 days in any calendar year, with 14 days for certain uses, along with moveable structures for that use. It is a use right, not a building right, and it does not cover a container left in place all year.

Containers in a garden and the incidental test

Part 1 Class E permits buildings and enclosures within the curtilage of a house that are incidental to the enjoyment of the dwellinghouse. A container used to store garden machinery, bicycles or household goods can be incidental. A container used to run a business, or lived in, is not.

The dimensional limits are where most garden containers fail or pass by chance:

• Single storey only, with a maximum eaves height of 2.5 metres
• Overall height limited to 4 metres for a dual-pitched roof and 3 metres otherwise
• Height limited to 2.5 metres where any part is within 2 metres of a boundary
• Buildings and hard surfaces must not cover more than half the land around the original house
• Nothing forward of the principal elevation facing a highway

A standard container is about 2.6 metres high, so placing one within 2 metres of a fence breaks the 2.5 metre limit immediately. Move it 2 metres in and it fits under the 3 metre figure.

On article 2(3) land, which means conservation areas, National Parks, National Landscapes, the Broads and World Heritage Sites, Class E does not permit a building on land between a side elevation of the house and the boundary. That rules out the side alley position in most conservation areas.

Containers on agricultural land

Part 6 covers agricultural development, and on a holding of five hectares or more it permits buildings reasonably necessary for the purposes of agriculture, subject to prior notification to the council for anything significant. The tests that catch containers are the 1,000 m² ground area limit, the 25 metre setback from the metalled carriageway of a trunk or classified road, and the requirement that the building is for agriculture rather than for storage of unrelated goods or vehicles.

A container used to store feed, fencing or machinery on a working farm usually sits comfortably inside Part 6. A container used to store a classic car collection, or to support a business run from the farm, does not, and the council will treat it as a material change of use alongside the building operation.

Councils in Green Belt and National Landscape areas look at these closely, and the same assessment applies to other farm structures, as with reservoirs and irrigation lagoons.

Visual impact, colour and screening conditions

Where permission is needed, the objection is rarely the container itself. It is the colour, the position and the absence of anything softening it.

Officers respond well to three things: a dark recessive colour such as a muted green or grey rather than the shipping line's original livery, a position tucked against an existing building or hedge line rather than in open view, and a planting or fencing scheme shown on the site plan. Expect conditions controlling the external colour and requiring the screening to be in place before the container is brought into use.

Paint specification in a condition is normal. Pick the colour yourself and put it in the application rather than letting the council choose.

Removal conditions and how they are enforced

A temporary permission for a container will carry a date by which it must be removed and the land reinstated. Breaching that is a breach of condition, and the council can serve a breach of condition notice, against which there is no appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. Prosecution follows non-compliance.

Where a container was never permitted at all, the council can serve an enforcement notice requiring its removal. Operational development has a four year immunity period, and the enforcement reforms in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 move that to ten years, so check the position as it now stands before assuming a container has become lawful by the passage of time. Immunity in any case runs from substantial completion, and a container that has moved around the site may have no settled start date to count from.

What to submit if permission is needed

For a container that will stay, the application is a small one but the documents still have to answer the obvious questions.

1. A location plan at 1:1250 and a block plan at 1:500 with the container's footprint, dimensions and distances to boundaries marked
2. Elevations showing height above existing ground level, and the proposed external colour
3. A short Planning Statement explaining the need, the duration sought and why the chosen position has the least effect on neighbours and the street scene
4. Where the site is in a conservation area or the scheme is more than a single store, a Design and Access Statement
5. Photographs of the position from the nearest public viewpoint and from any neighbouring window that looks towards it

If you want certainty that no permission is needed, apply for a lawful development certificate for proposed use or development under section 192 of the 1990 Act. That is the only formal way to confirm that works are lawful, and the fee is modest compared with the cost of moving a container twice.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a site like yours is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.