WINTER PLANNING
TEMPORARY SHELTERS AND PLANNING PERMISSION
Ian Pople, principal planner at Willis & Co, offers some guidance to help owners who want to build field shelters keep on the right side of the local planning authority (LPA).
> State of the art shelters from Ken Freivokh, Artwork Alpacas
P
icture the scene – you have been fortunate enough to secure your land and you are eagerly awaiting the arrival of your first alpacas or perhaps your current herd is expanding. You are going to need some form of shelter to protect them from the Great British weather and you’ve found the perfect solution advertised for sale that will fit the bill nicely. The seller tells you that people put them up all the time and that they don’t need planning permission; but are they right? Here at Willis & Co. we have been involved in numerous cases where unsuspecting clients have fallen foul of their local planning authority (LPA) when erecting so-called temporary shelters on their land. This often arises due to a
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complaint from a neighbour, or if a planning officer happens to notice them while undertaking a site visit in relation to another planning application that you might have submitted. Those of you that have had experience of the planning system already are probably all too aware that there are many grey areas and temporary shelters are no exception. Put simply, any object placed on land could be considered to be development under Section 55 of The Town and Country Planning Act 1990. However, it is the nature, use and degree of permanence of any such object that defines whether or not that object is a building or structure that could require planning permission under Section 57 of the same Act.
