Agricultural storage enforcement has succeeded in Devon after an Inspector found that machinery, building materials and shipping containers could not be treated as ancillary to farming. The business won an extra three months to clear the site, but the requirement to end the unauthorised use remains.
Inspector Elizabeth Pleasant issued her decision on 29 October 2026 concerning Round Field, a rural parcel beside the A30 and A377 interchange at Ide, near Exeter. Teignbridge District Council had alleged an unauthorised mixed use involving agriculture and commercial storage, and ordered the machinery, materials and containers to be removed.
The agricultural storage enforcement decision draws an important line between temporary works compounds, genuinely agricultural activity and a continuing commercial yard. A previous use connected with highway construction did not establish an enduring storage permission. Nor did arguments about the operation’s environmental management alter the legal question before the Inspector.
Why agricultural storage enforcement was challenged
Teignbridge served the enforcement notice on 3 December 2024. It alleged that agricultural land had changed to a mixed use of agriculture and the storage of machinery and construction materials, including siting steel storage containers. The notice required those non-agricultural activities to cease and the relevant items to be removed within three months after the notice took effect.
The appellant, 4MATION (SW) Ltd, relied on grounds (c) and (g) under section 174 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Ground (c) asks whether the matters alleged amount to a breach of planning control. Ground (g) concerns whether the compliance period is reasonable. These are different questions, and neither amounted to a fresh planning application for the yard.
The company argued that the storage activity was ancillary to the land’s lawful agricultural use. It also pointed to a history of storing equipment and materials associated with works on the neighbouring highway, suggesting that the present arrangements followed an established pattern. The Inspector examined whether the evidence actually supported those propositions.
A former highway compound did not give permanent rights
The council acknowledged an earlier depot or compound associated with temporary work to the adjoining highway. It explained that this had benefited from Part 4, Class A of the General Permitted Development Order 2015, because buildings and structures were required temporarily in connection with the highway operations. Those operations ended and the site was subsequently cleared.
That history is the central planning point. A temporary permission for facilities needed while works take place does not, by itself, authorise a later permanent storage business. The agricultural storage enforcement appeal therefore required evidence of what use was lawfully continuing when the new machinery, construction materials and containers arrived.
The Inspector considered aerial photographs produced by the council going back to 2005. Apart from the temporary highway depot, they indicated continuing agricultural use. She found no evidence establishing that the new commercial storage was subordinate or incidental to any agricultural operation on the site. Calling land a farm does not make every activity carried out there agricultural.
In her decision, Inspector Pleasant concluded that A material change of use has occurred
. She described the resulting mixed use as sui generis, meaning that it did not fall within a single ordinary use class. Crucially, the appellant had not proved a lawful ancillary relationship between the agricultural use and the additional commercial activity.
Why permitted development did not rescue the storage
The appellant’s position also raised a question familiar to anyone dealing with temporary compounds. Part 4 Class A permits certain temporary buildings and operations connected with other works, subject to its statutory limits. It does not create a blanket permission to retain the site as a separate commercial yard once those operations have finished.
Inspector Pleasant found no GPDO class authorising the particular mixed use of agriculture, machinery and building-material storage and containers. Ground (c) therefore failed. The fact that equipment might once have been stored nearby, or that the land was a practical place to put containers, was not evidence of an enduring permission.
Our change of use guide explains why the actual use of land and its relationship to the primary activity matter. The distinction is particularly important for landowners letting part of an agricultural holding for unrelated storage, plant hire or a contractor’s compound.
The earlier application had already been refused
The background was not limited to the enforcement notice. In May 2025 a different Inspector, R Kent, dismissed a planning appeal against refusal of a scheme for a machinery and construction-material storage yard with twelve secure containers and landscaping. That was appeal APP/P1133/W/24/3356058, arising from Teignbridge application 24/01428/FUL.
That earlier decision described a countryside site between the A30 dual carriageway and Ide Village Road. The Inspector considered that containers and hardstanding would introduce an urbanising, utilitarian appearance into an important rural approach to the village. Proposed planting would soften some views, but would not remove the underlying harm to landscape character.
The earlier Inspector also found insufficient evidence of a strong functional relationship with agriculture or other qualifying rural activity. Those findings are context, not a substitute for the legal test in the new appeal. The agricultural storage enforcement decision of 29 October 2026 addressed the existing unauthorised use and the time needed to comply, rather than deciding a fresh planning proposal on its merits.
Six months allowed for clearing the site
The company also argued that three months was insufficient to find alternative premises, relocate its operations and deal with any staffing implications. It sought a compliance period of twenty-four months. The Inspector recognised that relocation of a working business can take longer than the original notice allowed.
However, that did not justify a two-year delay. The council had identified harm to landscape character, and the Inspector balanced that harm against the practical difficulties of moving. She substituted six months for three months, allowing ground (g) but upholding the notice in every other material respect.
Agricultural storage enforcement therefore produced a partial procedural success and a substantive defeat. The order to stop using the site for non-agricultural storage, and to remove the machinery, materials and steel containers, still applies. A longer deadline is not retrospective consent and should not be marketed as permission to continue the use.
What landowners and operators should check
An important first question is whether machinery and materials serve the agricultural operation itself or an independent contracting business. Their presence on farmland is not decisive. Records of the lawful baseline use, contracts, site history and the purpose of storage may all be relevant when assessing whether a separate material change of use has occurred.
If the site was once used as a roadworks or construction compound, establish the precise permission relied upon, the works to which it related and whether the compound was removed after completion. Do not assume that a temporary permitted development right survives the event that justified it. Nor should a dismissed planning application be confused with a certificate of lawful use.
Planning Geek’s guide to enforcement appeal grounds explains the different statutory questions, while our enforcement notice guide sets out what a notice can require and how it operates. In this case, the difference between grounds (c) and (g) determined exactly what could be achieved.
Decision and sources
Inspector Elizabeth Pleasant decided appeal APP/P1133/C/25/3358761 on 29 October 2026 for Land at Round Field, Ide, Exeter. The official Planning Inspectorate case record covers the enforcement appeal. The earlier refused storage-yard proposal is recorded under appeal APP/P1133/W/24/3356058, decided 20 May 2025. The short quoted words above are from Planning Inspectorate material under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
The appeal decision is also available on AppealBase. The conclusion is straightforward: the agricultural storage enforcement notice was upheld because a temporary highway compound and agricultural land status did not legitimise an ongoing mixed commercial storage use. The business received six months to comply, not permission to retain the yard.
0 Comments