Living off Agricultural Land

[maggienetball]

I wonder if anyone can help me. I've been offered a piece of agricultural land to purchase. Now I know that I can't build a property on it because it is deemed agricultural but can I plop a mobile home on it and live in that given that the mobile home is a tempoary dwelling. And if I can put a mobile home on it - what about those wooden lodge type homes? Are you alowed main water, electricity and main drains onto the land?

The obvious thing to do would be to ask the planning office but I don't want to draw attention to my idea - yet!

Anyone know or have any suggestions?

[Bluebell]

Hi
I think you will need planning permission for any agricultural dwelling, even if it is only a temporary structure. If your land is bigger than 5 hectares it may fall within permitted planning if it is classed as a building/structure for agricultural use. You would need to demonstrate that the agricultural activity will support at least one worker full time. It is really difficult to get PP these days as more and more farmers are selling off little bits of land and the Town and Country Planning Act discourages the erection of single dwellings in the countryside on small blocks of land. Sometimes, the people who sell log cabins will advise on planning permission but we have a registered smallholding which one of us does run full time but we cannot get PP for a dwelling. We do have permission to site and station a caravan but it cannot be used as our main residence. Hope this helps.
Bluebell

[ina]

Also - they may have an issue if you start gardening on your land... That's not an agricultural activity.

[maggienetball]

Thanks for that Bluebell and Ina. It's given me avenues to explore. VERY interesting about the gardening bit. I can't imagine not growing veggies and flowers.

[ina]

From what I've read somewhere else (I think here on Ish) it's ok if your veg is part of an agricultural rotation - but not if you have a corner of the field permanently used as a garden! But that may vary from region to region, so I would definitely find out before starting to plant fruit bushes or so.

[Rod in Japan]

This is not going to help you much, and it's just a comment on the situation overall...

... but in a lot of countries, there are legal and structural obstacles to small, sustainable agriculture. The rules in Japan militate against non-professional farmers getting hold of land, living on it, and producing something from it, even while the average age of professional farmers is well over 60 and they make about a penny for six crates of cucumbers. And yet these absurd rules don't even stop people from buying up six rice fields and building a nice productive carpark on it.

To get hold of some agricultural land that we can live on and grow stuff, we had to legally convert some overgrown, junk-strewn scrubland from agricultural land to residential land. But by percentage, our land is more agricultural now than residential, and far more agricultural than it was when we bought it. This all cost money of course, to keep some stupid poobah in a job, in spite of his ignorance of the law. We ended up knowing more about the law than the poobah.

Land reform, that's the ticket...

[red]

the rules on agricultural land used to grow your own veggies are foggy. if you grow flowers or have arbours and garden gnomes then clearly its a garden. if its a field full of cabbages, then maybe its agriculture.

I have been told: if you sell veg, then its agric - and the thing to do is sell one cauli to a friendly local green grocers, get a receipt. job done.
You would need to apply for horticultural use - say you were going to raise bedding plants to sell. once you have that.. job done.

having said that.. I'm all for keeping agricultural land as agricultural land.. if the rules were relaxed.. we wouldb't have any!

and btw, keeping a horse is not agric use (unless the horse is used in farming.. say to pull a plough)

as for living on the land, I believe you need PP even for a temp building. some people try to get a building by first applying to build animal shelter.. say a stable.. then once thats in place, apply for conversion to dwelling.. but the authorities.. particularly in the west country.. are not idiots.
One guy I know said he was going to make his field a travellers site 'to help the community' - his plan was that the locals would be so horrified, they would only be too pleased to accept the alternative, building a house there.. it didn't work!

[Thurston Garden]

Aye, I think it would be tough. Relatives erected stables on agricultural land and then battled for 7 years to get PP for a house. Now they have stables, house, garages and workshop! Probably taken 15 years to get consent for all that though.

You can call in (quite anonymously) to your local planning office and ask to look at the local plan. (Odd's on it will be on their website too). If the land is Zoned in the local plan for housing (or next to a zoned piece of land and therefore possibly be included in the local plan review which in Scotland is every 5 years), then you might stand a better chance - mostly these zoned areas have legal agreements with the land owner and a major house developer (an Option Agreement), so unless the landowner is slow on the uptake and not tied himself into an Option (Residential Zoned agricultural land is worth £1m an acre here) it's unlikely to ever be zoned for residential.

There are, however, one or two gems out there, so be sure to check it out!