Planning

In general terms planning permission considers the appearance of a proposal and it's impact on the surrounding area, most people are unaware of planning requirements, when considering extending existing stables, providing new buildings, providing Ménage or Arena facilities, or even just extending an existing area of yard or hardstanding, but generally speaking planning permission would be required for everything mentioned above.  

Whilst the Planning Legislation can be complicated it actually plays a very important role in helping to protect the environment in which we all live, work and play, including our villages, towns, cities and the countryside and the legislation should be ignored at your peril. If your Local Planning Authority consider that a development contravenes their own planning requirements, they are entitled to take enforcement action against the  owner(s) of the building or land, with the ultimate sanction of having the development taken down and removed. 

By their very nature, most Equestrian facilities, lie within areas designated as Green Belt, but many also fall within National Park, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and even Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and these are all likely to have their own Special Planning Policies. If the land on which you are proposing to develop is leasehold or rented, you will almost always be required to gain permission from the owners of the lease or the landlord as well. 

The Local Development Plans of each Planning Authority, vary in accordance with their own local needs, which means that in many cases, the guidelines for equestrian development in one Planning Authority can be quite different to the guidelines in a neighbouring area. Typically the Local Development Plan will be revised every 10 to 15 years or so, but during the life of the plan, individual planning guidelines can and do change, to meet the new needs of the area. This often means that what was acceptable a couple of years ago, may now be viewed as unacceptable and therefore relying on the experience of a friend or neighbour could well be unreliable. 

Although there are a small number of Equestrian facilities provided within an urban environment, as mentioned above most lie within areas designated as Green Belt and almost all will involve the use of land or buildings previously used for agriculture. From a planning point of view, equestrian facilities are provided for recreation or sport, rather than agriculture, so if you are considering changing the use of an existing building, such as a barn or shippon to stables, (whether you intend to carry out any significant conversion work or not), this is generally viewed as a planning issue by most Local Planning Authorities. This can also be the case if you want to create larger yard or hardstanding areas, parking areas, creating ménages, arenas, even in some cases establishing new entrances into existing fields. If you are considering providing new buildings or extending existing ones to create stables, tack rooms, feed rooms etc then you’ll definitely require planning permission. 

We pride ourselves on the quality of the work that we carryout out for clients, we will always outline all known planning issues to you and make you aware of anything that we feel may cause significant complications along the way. Because of the  vagaries of the various planning requirements, we can’t guarantee success with every planning application that we make, but we feel our track record speaks for itself, because over 95% of all our applications are successful.