Planning permission for a temporary surface car park

Temporary car park planning permission is needed for almost every case of putting cars on open land, because both halves of the proposal count as development. The surfacing is an operation, and parking is a material change of use from whatever the land did before. A gravelled yard behind a shop, a cleared demolition site, a field next to a station: each needs permission unless it falls inside a narrow permitted development route.

That route is Part 4 Class B of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, which allows the temporary use of land for any purpose for a limited number of days in a calendar year. Two limits make it less useful than it sounds. It permits a use, not building or engineering works, so you cannot lay a surface under it. And the day count is cumulative across all temporary uses of that land, so an event field already using its allowance has nothing left for parking. Check the current wording of Class B before relying on it, because the day limit has been amended more than once.

Why surfacing land for parking is development

Section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 defines development as building, engineering, mining or other operations, or a material change in the use of land. Laying a compacted stone or bound surface across a field is an engineering operation. Using that field for parking is a change of use. The two are usually applied for together in one full application, described as change of use of land to car parking with associated hardstanding, lighting and boundary treatment.

Within the curtilage of a house, Class F of Part 1 allows hard surfaces, subject to the porous surfacing requirement for front gardens over five square metres. That class has nothing to do with commercial parking and cannot be stretched to cover it. Neither can an agricultural claim under Part 6, because parking cars is not agriculture.

One thing worth settling at the outset is the existing lawful use. If the land has been used for parking for ten years or more without enforcement action, the use may already be lawful and the right application is a certificate of lawfulness rather than a fresh permission. An evidence case for a certificate turns on statutory declarations, dated photographs and account records rather than assertion, and the planning history needs pulling together before anything else is drafted.

Temporary permissions and how long they run

The power to grant permission for a limited period comes from section 72(1)(b) of the 1990 Act. Planning Practice Guidance on the use of conditions is direct about when that power is appropriate: a temporary permission fits where the applicant wants a temporary use, or where a trial period would tell the authority something it does not already know, and it is not a way of making an otherwise unacceptable scheme acceptable. If the objection is to the effect of cars parked on that land, ending the permission after three years does not answer it.

Periods of two, three and five years are the common range. Longer periods attract the argument that the use is permanent in character. Shorter periods rarely repay the fee and the surfacing cost.

Do not assume a renewal. The guidance indicates that a second temporary permission will rarely be justified where the original grant was made to allow a trial, since by then the authority has the evidence it asked for. Plan the scheme so that it either stops cleanly or has a route to a permanent consent supported by the local plan.

Surfacing, permeability and surface water

Run-off is the technical issue that sinks otherwise simple applications. A car park replaces a permeable field with an impermeable or partly permeable surface, increasing the rate and volume of run-off and adding hydrocarbons from vehicles. The lead local flood authority is a statutory consultee for major development and is consulted informally on much smaller schemes.

The workable answers are familiar. Permeable block paving or a reinforced grass system over a granular sub-base keeps infiltration where ground conditions and contamination history allow it. Where infiltration is not viable, attenuation with a controlled discharge and an oil interceptor on the outfall is the fallback. A Drainage Strategy should state the design event, the climate change allowance applied, the limiting discharge rate and the treatment stages, and should say plainly what happens to run-off during the temporary period and after restoration.

Reinforced grass has an additional advantage on temporary schemes. It reads as reversible, which supports the restoration argument and reduces the landscape objection.

Lighting, boundaries and security

Lighting is where neighbours engage. Column-mounted floodlights on a site next to houses will draw objections about light spill into bedroom windows and about sky glow. Assess the scheme against the Institution of Lighting Professionals guidance note on obtrusive light, which sets limits by environmental zone, and design to the lowest zone the surroundings support. A Lighting Assessment with an isolux plot, mounting heights, colour temperature and a curfew regime answers the point before it is raised.

Boundary treatment carries two functions that pull in opposite directions. Security wants a 2.4 metre weldmesh fence. Amenity and character want a hedge. A hedge with a lower fence set behind it usually satisfies both, and it survives the restoration condition better than a concrete post line.

Barrier control, payment machines, CCTV columns and a small attendant cabin all need showing on the layout. A cabin is a building, and adding one after permission is granted is a separate application.

Effect on parking and transport policy

Councils with a town centre parking strategy will test whether new public parking supports or undermines it. Additional long-stay spaces close to a station can conflict with a modal shift policy, while short-stay spaces serving a high street with poor turnover may be supported. The honest position is that this argument is decided locally, on the adopted plan and any parking or town centre strategy, and it is worth reading both before drafting.

Where the site is allocated for something else, housing or employment, a temporary car park can be presented as an interim use that keeps the allocation deliverable. That argument works better when the permission is short, the works are reversible and there is no ransom strip created. It works badly when the car park would need the whole site and the allocation is in the plan's five year supply.

A Transport Statement sized to the scheme should set out access arrangements, visibility, pedestrian routes through the car park, accessible bay numbers and cycle parking, plus a trip assessment where the parking serves a new use rather than displacing existing demand.

Restoration at the end of the period

Every temporary permission should be paired with a restoration condition, and the wording matters more than applicants expect. A condition requiring the use to cease and the land to be restored within a stated number of months of expiry, in accordance with a restoration scheme approved before the use begins, is enforceable. A condition requiring restoration "to the satisfaction of the local planning authority" with no approved scheme is weak and invites argument.

Get the restoration method statement in with the application. It should cover removal of surfacing and sub-base, treatment of compaction, reinstatement of topsoil with a stated depth, seeding specification and an aftercare period. On sites in the Green Belt or a National Landscape, that document does a lot of work, because the temporary and reversible nature of the change is central to the case.

Sites where a bond or an obligation under section 106 is offered to secure restoration tend to move faster through committee. It is not usually required for a small scheme, but offering it removes the officer's main worry about what happens when the operator walks away.

The same logic runs through other short-life proposals, and the pattern is set out in more detail in guidance on temporary permissions and what happens when they expire and on meanwhile use. Both are worth reading before you settle on the period you apply for. If you want the document list for your own site, enter the postcode on PlanScope and work through the constraints it flags.

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.