Legality of living in a yurt in the UK...

[gonzo_the_great]

Long ago, I was looking at buying woodland, rather than a bricks and mortar house.
I recall that you could put up a building for forestry workers to live in and equipment stores. But they could only live there for something like 9 (?) months in a year.
So I planned to register the land as two separate plots, owned in different names. Put a concrete pad down that straddled the border, with a a static caravan. Then just push the van back and forth over the border, when the time was up.
OK it's being cheeky, but it could keep the authgorities tied up in paperwork for years and years. (Find land that straddles a county border and see them sweat!)

Eventually I just brought a house.
And last year, built a little yurt in the garden.
I had some materials that I could not bring myself to skip, and a beer conversation was had with a friend, and.... Beers with friends now occur in the yurt.

 

[mrcharly]

The worst (imo) would be the earthen floor. Wet and nasty. Straw hosts 'little friends'

There are lots of solutions to that.

The classic one is to lay down pallets, then some sort of draft/damp-resistant membrane and then rugs.

I've seen wooden flooring laid in sections on 4x2, in a similar way to temp staging/dance flooring.
Stone flag entrances work well for taking off muddy footwear.

 

[Janne]

Clever. The Sami used a layer of Reindeer skin, hairy side up.
When I was in a similar living condition, we used freshly harvested branches of pine. Lovely smell, lasted about 3 weeks.

Important to choose a site correctly, preferably just after a heavy rain.

 

[woodstock]

Clever. The Sami used a layer of Reindeer skin, hairy side up.
When I was in a similar living condition, we used freshly harvested branches of pine. Lovely smell, lasted about 3 weeks.

Important to choose a site correctly, preferably just after a heavy rain.

Reindeer hides great for a floor of bedding just make sure it has been treated otherwise it sheds hair and take it from one that knows they are bloody painful like little needles, we have used fresh pine boughs and it was sleeping on a sprung mattress, in the tipi we use reeds and we did have a family of voles that lived under it but eventually they became really friendly and would take titbits saying that they did eat some of my paperwork

 

[Janne]

I would think most reindeer skins are properly treated these days, but they still lose the outer stiff hairs.
I once squashed a lemming putting my foot into the boot. Nasty feeling.
Cool to have a tame family of voles!

 

[didicoy]

To answer the OP's question. Planning consent/permission isn't required on land you own or land with permission given to you by the owner/manager, for a Total of 28 days in any one year. Not including the siting adjacent to a lawful residential building. Laws still apply to that situation.

For the purpose of erecting a yurt to dwell in, in open Countryside or woodland in England, there are some circumstances where dwelling in a temporary structure such as a yurt/tipi/tent/log cabin or caravan is allowed with Local Authority approval and still without planning consent. For instance, in woodland where need can be proven for such temporary dewelling, eg. for forestry management purposes or for Agricultural (mainly livestock) or essential equipment supervision (hydro or electrical) Horses and some other types of livestock are excluded from been deemed in need of 24/7 husbandry and therefor temporarily dwelling consent in any type of temporary or perminant structure would not be permitted without full planning approval (after the 28 days have elapsed).
To qualify for temporary dwelling within a woodland, the operator must show that 75% of his income or more will be generated from the activity or that the activity will be temporary for a specified time period and only for one or more seasons each year, for management purposes.

The Local Authorities have GPS tiles on their desktop. These are updated every quarter. It's not beyond them to monitor any site with previous infractions. They can and do insist any structures are removed within a time frame if a person is in breach of any agreement.
Fines of £50 per day for acting in breach of a Local Authority condition, can result in the Local Authority removing any structure and billing the occupant/owner for the costs.

 

[Tengu]

Theres a person over the hill in a Ger.

But its pretty well hidden I must admit.

 

[oldtimer]

Not really. People get funny about caravans. They have primal connections to "travellers" or Gypsy folk.
We rocked up to our new piece of land and plonked a little touring caravan on it to use as a feed store and toilet. The planning officer turned up in 48 hours following up on loads of tip offs.

More acceptable might be a shepherds hut or living van.


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David Cameron put a shepherds hut on his land. Bet he got no grief from the planning officer.

 

[didicoy]

David Cameron put a shepherds hut on his land. Bet he got no grief from the planning officer.

You can site them on land, they are classed as a mobile structure. it's only if you intend residing in it that it becomes illegal

 

[daveO]

I do a few Planning application jobs for agricultural dwellings and various holiday homes and rentals every year. I can tell you that getting planning approval for anything like that is a long and expensive process with no guarantee of success. Yurts for holiday let use are achievable and gypsy caravans/shepards huts are becoming more acceptable but only for increasing tourism and only if you can put forward a good business case. I've tried for the odd temporary permission for static caravans and the like in fields but you'd never get anything long term. Those jobs invariably get handed over to specialist planning lawyers with the associated costs involved with that which would probably fund a good deposit on a house. Your best bet would be to buy enough land that you could reasonably start a business on there that would lead to you needing to be on site to manage it full time. Probably cheaper to buy a house in the first place though.

 

[Janne]

If you buy a field or site with an old caravan on, a caravan that has been there for decades and is there without a permission, are you allowed to place a similar ( but newer) caravan there without permission?
Grandfather principle?

 

[didicoy]

I've owned 5 acres of land for 30 odd years. Lived on it in tin trailers, even a double decker bus for periods upto 18 months at a time over the years. Always running up against the Local Authority eventually. Several planning application fails along with planning appeals that failed. Moved 100 miles away and got residential planning permission on another piece of land for a 34 foot static caravan straight away. Been living in it for ten years now. Still own the 5 acres and there's nothing they can do about me staying on that site for 28 days a year.

Buy twelve separate plots throughout the County/Country and move between them.

 

[daveO]

If you buy a field or site with an old caravan on, a caravan that has been there for decades and is there without a permission, are you allowed to place a similar ( but newer) caravan there without permission?
Grandfather principle?

Grey area but usually no. You can try to get a 'certificate of lawful use' to say that the current occupier has been there long enough to be allowed to stay without planning permission but it doesn't generally transfer between owners as it tends to be case specific. If the caravan has been empty then there is no residential use in place to maintain. I tried to buy an old cottage in the Brecon Beacons that had been used as a barn for many years but was clearly a cottage. In planning law though it was now a barn and they wouldn't allow it to be treated as a renovation of a house. I got permission after a long battle for it to be converted back to a house but it has to be classed as a barn conversion not as a house renovation. This allowed tighter controls over the land use around it and whether it could be made larger or not. I didn't buy it in the end but I made the owner a lot of money.

 

[daveO]

I should say though that every local authority is different in it's attitude to this type of thing so if you want to try something like this then research which ones have the most relaxed policies (or the laziest enforcement officers) and try your luck there. It's also worth researching 'one planet development policy' as that can be very useful for getting eco housing approved in odd locations. You have to approach it very carefully though to tick all the boxes to qualify.

 

[santaman2000]

....Buy twelve separate plots throughout the County/Country and move between them.

Sounds expensive, sneaky; AND BRILLIANT!!!

 

[Janne]

I myself had a nice battle with Wealden Council planning. Found remains of several out buildings on some land I had, I wanted to build a barn with the same area. Took, what, one year? With a lawyer. Worked at the end.

Part of the problem was an objection from a very famous actress.

 

[Robson Valley]

Don't fight it. Buy a house in a little village.
A house with the shere volume to be useful.
Repair and replace the guts to fix that up.

I never, ever enjoy a race to the dunny at 2AM in the rain.

I find some local people who still want to be suspicious of me.
Nice to throw it in their face that I bought my home in 2000.
And, that they should get out more.

 

[gonzo_the_great]

Some chatter on planning law, a few posts down.

From my last look into this.... If something has been in place for a period of time, you get grandfather rights.
If you can get some evidence, you can just continue to say nothing. Or if you want to formalise it, you can ask the council for a letter confirming that they will not take any action over the matter. It's not actually automatic planning permission, but it is as good as, unless you are looking to sell the place.
I recall that the time limits were 4 years for planning permission and 10 years for change of use.
But buildings regs have no such timeouts and they have bigger teeth than the planning people.

There is a lot that you can do under the permitted development rules (relaxed a couple of years ago). But these are written for domestic properties in mind. And though it is quite permissive regarding outbuildings etc, it is still quite restrictive on anything that you will live in.

Aside....
There are also some rules to do with what you have built and how it is presented. You can't intentionally hide a structure. How you define intent would probably be down to a court. But possibly the use of natural cover could be acceptable?
I heard about this recently. When a friend was looking at a plot with a barn, and existing permission to convert to a house. But the current appearence had to be kept, which was rotting timber and rusty rolled iron.
He looked at the possability of building a house inside, then just let the barn rot and fall down around it. But the consultant said that this would be seen as attempting to hide the structure.

 

[daveO]

I wanted to buy another cottage locally to me that needed a lot of work. The current owner had divorced her husband and got the house but after a few years it was falling down around her ears and she couldn't afford the upkeep. It turned out the house was designated in Planning law as an affordable house for local farmers and forestry workers only and since her farmer husband no longer lived there she was there illegally. Luckily for her no one had picked this up for 6 years or so and she obtained a Lawful Use Certificate to say she could stay. Sadly no mortgage company would accept this to transfer to a new owner so it was snapped up for cash by someone from London as a second home. Another total fail for Planning policy.

You have very little chance of getting a renovation project around here anymore without full asking price in cash.

 

[bearbait]

I knew of a couple that had a good number of acres in Powys, mid-Wales, and a couple of barns but no farmhouse. They lived in a caravan in one of the barns. (Also saves needing tarps/extensions to the caravan for extra living space.)

Maybe the planners went easy on them as they were farming it? Or maybe no one grassed them up as they were farming it? Not sure.