There's a persistent belief that you can't live on agricultural land without planning permission. It's more accurate to say you can't do it carelessly. Having spent years on this (and publishing a book about it), here's the short version of what actually works:
The workable route is buying the right land in the first place, siting a mobile home while you establish a genuine agricultural use, and then satisfying the tests planners apply before granting permission for a permanent dwelling. Broadly: that there's a genuine functional need for someone to live on the land, that the enterprise is financially viable, and that the need can't be met by existing housing nearby.
What catches people out, over and over: restrictive covenants on cheap plots, no legal access (ransom strips), Article 4 directions stripping permitted development rights, and land that's cheap precisely because it will never get permission on flood zones, AONB, green belt. The land you can afford easily is usually the land you can't do anything with.
Happy to answer questions in the thread. Planning is one of those areas where the details matter enormously and every county behaves a bit differently. (The long version is my book, Field to Farm (details at fieldtofarm.com but ask away here freely).
The workable route is buying the right land in the first place, siting a mobile home while you establish a genuine agricultural use, and then satisfying the tests planners apply before granting permission for a permanent dwelling. Broadly: that there's a genuine functional need for someone to live on the land, that the enterprise is financially viable, and that the need can't be met by existing housing nearby.
What catches people out, over and over: restrictive covenants on cheap plots, no legal access (ransom strips), Article 4 directions stripping permitted development rights, and land that's cheap precisely because it will never get permission on flood zones, AONB, green belt. The land you can afford easily is usually the land you can't do anything with.
Happy to answer questions in the thread. Planning is one of those areas where the details matter enormously and every county behaves a bit differently. (The long version is my book, Field to Farm (details at fieldtofarm.com but ask away here freely).
