Walkthrough: extending a touring caravan site

Adding pitches to an existing touring caravan site needs planning permission for the change in the use of the land, and a variation of the site licence issued under the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960. The licence cannot be granted until planning permission exists, and its conditions are about health, safety and welfare rather than landscape or amenity. Applicants regularly assume the licence conditions will govern spacing and layout, then find the planning officer asking different questions entirely.

The walkthrough below is illustrative. It describes a type of application rather than any real site or decision.

The two consents and how they interact

Section 3 of the 1960 Act makes it an offence to use land as a caravan site without a licence, and section 3(3) means the licensing authority must issue a licence where planning permission for use as a caravan site is in force. The licence then carries model standards conditions covering pitch spacing, fire points, roads, water, drainage and electrical supply.

Planning deals with whether the use is acceptable in that location: landscape and visual effect, highway capacity, ecology, drainage, flood risk and the effect on neighbours.

So the sequence is planning first, licence second. A proposed layout should nonetheless be checked against the model standards before submission, because a layout that cannot be licensed is not deliverable, and the usual separation distance between touring caravan units under the model standards will shape how many pitches a field will take.

Landscape and visual effect of additional pitches

Touring caravans are pale, horizontal, reflective and present in numbers. In open countryside they read as a distinct change even when individually small, and the effect is strongly seasonal because the site is usually busiest when the hedges are in leaf and the days are long.

The assessment needs to deal with that honestly. Establish the baseline from public vantage points: rights of way, lanes, elevated ground and any nearby designated landscape. Then describe the change with the site at full occupancy in August, not empty in February.

Where the site sits within or close to a National Landscape, the statutory duty to seek to further the purposes of conservation and enhancement applies, and the bar rises. A Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment prepared to GLVIA3 is the right document where the site is prominent or designated, and councils normally expect a suitably qualified author for this work.

Mitigation that works tends to be structural: new native hedgerow and tree belt planting along the exposed boundaries, pitch layout set back from field edges, dark-coloured amenity buildings, and no site lighting beyond low-level bollards. Planting takes 10 to 15 years to do its job, which is why a phasing condition matters.

Access, internal roads and passing places

Towing vehicles are long and slow. Visibility at the site access should be assessed against the speed survey rather than the posted limit, and the junction geometry has to let a car and twin-axle caravan turn in without crossing the opposing lane.

Internal roads need enough width and radius for the same combination, with passing places on single-track lengths at intervals the model standards address, and a turning facility at the end so no outfit has to reverse onto the highway.

Where the lane serving the site is narrow, the assessment should look at the cumulative effect of arrivals and departures, which on a touring site concentrate heavily on Friday afternoons and Sunday mornings. A Transport Statement is usually the right level of evidence for an extension of this scale rather than a full assessment.

Construction traffic for the groundworks is a separate matter and is normally dealt with by condition.

Foul drainage and water supply capacity

Most touring sites are off mains drainage. An extension adds load to whatever system exists, and the existing system is often already at or beyond its design capacity.

The evidence needed is a record of the existing arrangement, its design population, the additional population from the new pitches at the occupancy the licence will permit, and a demonstration that the receiving system can take it. Where a package treatment plant discharges to a watercourse, an environmental permit or an exemption is required, and the discharge consent conditions have to be checked against the increased flow.

Where discharge is to ground via a drainage field, percolation testing to the relevant standard is needed, plus confirmation that the field is outside any source protection zone constraint and far enough from any watercourse or borehole.

Water supply demand rises with pitch numbers too. A Foul Sewage Assessment covering the whole site rather than the extension alone is the document that answers the environmental health officer's question before it is asked.

Occupancy conditions and seasonal restrictions

Councils commonly condition touring sites to prevent them becoming permanent residential accommodation. The usual forms are a restriction to holiday use, a prohibition on any caravan being occupied as a person's sole or main residence, a requirement to keep a register of occupiers available for inspection, and in some locations a closed season.

A closed season condition should be resisted where there is no landscape or ecological reason for it, and supported with evidence where the site operator wants year-round trading. The justification an inspector looks for is usually about winter landscape visibility with hedges bare, or about ground conditions and the appearance of hardstanding in a wet field.

Distinguish touring pitches from static caravan pitches in the description of development. They are materially different in visual terms and in occupancy patterns, and a permission for touring pitches does not authorise statics.

The documents submitted

For an illustrative extension of around 20 touring pitches on a field adjoining an existing site, the pack would normally comprise:

• Planning Statement setting out the policy case for rural tourism and economic benefit
• Landscape and visual impact assessment with winter and summer viewpoints
• Preliminary ecological appraisal, with a biodiversity net gain baseline and metric
• Transport statement with a speed survey and swept path analysis
• Foul drainage and water supply assessment
• Flood risk assessment if the field is one hectare or more or in Flood Zone 2 or 3
• Landscape and planting scheme with a 15 year management plan
• Site layout showing pitch spacing against the model standards

The ecology work is the long lead item. Habitat survey for the biodiversity metric is best carried out between April and September, so a scheme conceived in autumn waits for spring unless a suitable existing survey exists. A Preliminary Ecological Appraisal by a qualified ecologist should be commissioned first.

Conditions on screening and phasing

Expect conditions tying occupation of the new pitches to the completion of boundary planting, or to the end of the first planting season after the first pitch is brought into use. That is reasonable and worth agreeing rather than arguing.

Also expect a condition limiting the number of pitches and their siting to the approved plan, a landscape management condition running for a defined period, an external lighting condition, and a surface water drainage condition requiring details before the hardstanding is laid.

Read each one against the programme before the decision is issued. A pre-commencement condition on drainage details agreed in October can cost a full season.

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This is general guidance rather than 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. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required.