Key Elements to Consider when Developing a Glamping Site

Crown and Canopy are specialists in the consultancy, design, planning and development of glamping sites across the UK and Ireland.

We work with landowners and farmers from the very beginning ideas stage of a project right through to architectural design, planning permission, build, and delivery through our comprehensive suite of services.

The Quist Treehouse

Design and gaining planning permission are key parts of the process in developing a successful glamping site. These steps lay the foundations for your venture and require you to consider all elements, ensuring a well thought out design which is compliant with local planning policy and aligned with your vision. In these early stages, it’s important to establish what kind of product will work and perform well on your site and, crucially, what kind of development would be acceptable to the local authority under planning. As the market grows, a bespoke and unique approach to design is invaluable and will allow you to produce a one-off development specific to your site and ideals, which will also ensure a future-proof investment with a highperformance value.

Bespoke year-round products such as treehouses and cabins tend to be the highest performers in the industry, yet these don’t always have to be permanent structures. These structures offer the most freedom and creativity when it comes to design, which is also beneficial with regards to planning as materiality, scale, and appearance are key considerations throughout this process. Your design and choice of materials will define how well your accommodation sits within the natural landscape and inform its sustainability credentials.

As planning policy develops and climate crisis documents are declared, sustainability is an increasingly important factor. We often integrate sustainable features such as EV charging points, bike storage, and electric bike provision, as well as assistance to access sites via the closest public transport links. Connections to public footpaths and local services such as shops, pubs and restaurants are a major benefit to your business from a planning and guest experience perspective.

Impact on the environment has always been a consideration for us and since the early days, nature and environmental enhancement schemes have been a core element of the projects and applications we develop. In our view this is a win-win, for both the environment and developers, as outdoor accommodation schemes heavily benefit from a nature rich environment. In turn, significant enhancement schemes allow us to mitigate small scale, low impact development.

The Quist Treehouse

In more recent years we have been able to access significant funding for these enhancement schemes as well as designing them into planning applications as a form of mitigation through initiatives such as Woodland Creation Grants (WCGs) and schemes such as Farming in Protected Landscapes (FIPL). In addition, new funding schemes that support rural tourism developments such as investments in visitor accommodation and farm diversification for event venues are soon to launch in 2023. We will explore these initiatives in more detail in the next edition of the magazine.

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