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.

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