The 28 day rule and caravans

Ask around and you will be told the “28 day rule” lets you put a caravan on a field and live in it for a month, or dot occupation across the year. It is one of the most durable myths in planning, and it is wrong. The rule is real, but it does far less than people think, and it specifically will not let you live in a caravan.

This page explains what the 28 day rule (Part 4, Class B of the General Permitted Development Order) actually permits, why caravans are carved out of it altogether, and the traps that catch people who try to stretch it.

What the 28-day rule actually is

Part 4, Class B of the General Permitted Development Order 2015 permits the use of any land for any purpose for not more than 28 days in total in any calendar year, of which no more than 14 days may be for holding a market or for motor-car and motorcycle racing. It is a permitted development right, so no application is needed; you simply carry out the temporary use within the day limit. Two features are easy to miss and both matter: the 28 days are an aggregate across the year, not a single block of 28 consecutive days, and the right is over the use of the land, not the use of any caravan on it. The count runs per planning unit, and it resets each calendar year.

It legitimately covers temporary events and seasonal activities: a car boot sale, a small festival, a point-to-point, a farmers’ market. What it is not is a route to living somewhere, and, as the next section explains, it will not cover putting a caravan on the land either.

Why it does not let you live in a caravan

The Order simply takes caravans out of Class B. Since 26 July 2024 the right is not available where the land is used for putting any caravan on it, with one narrow exception: a caravan that is a motor vehicle designed or adapted for people to live in, a motorhome or campervan, sited in connection with a festival. Nothing else. A touring caravan, a static, a twin-unit, a caravan there for storage: all outside the right.

This is wider than it used to be. The 2023 Order came into force on 26 July 2023, but it held this change back for a year, so Class B kept its old form until the end of 25 July 2024. Before then the exclusion was worded around a caravan site, which left people arguing about whether a particular caravan created one. That argument has gone. If the use of the land involves siting a caravan, Class B does not help, full stop.

Two further carve-outs are worth knowing. Camping is also excluded from Class B, again unless it is in connection with a festival, so you cannot run a pop-up campsite on the 28 days. That is not the end of the story, though: the same 2023 Order created a separate right for campsites, Part 4, Class BC, which allows up to 60 days a year and needs prior approval in flood zones 2 and 3. And the right never applies where the land is a building or is within the curtilage of a building, which rules out gardens and drives in any event. The one use everyone wants the 28-day rule for is the one it excludes.

Even setting the carve-out aside, the rule permits a temporary use of land, not permanent residential occupation. Living in a caravan is not a 28-day activity that stops and restarts: it is a continuing residential use, and that needs planning permission in the ordinary way.

How the days are counted: the traps

People come unstuck on the counting even for legitimate temporary uses:

• setup and breakdown count: the days the land is given over to the use, including putting up and taking down, all count towards the 28; the courts have quashed lawful development certificates where organisers forgot this and quietly ran over
• anything left standing between uses keeps the clock running: Class B only authorises a moveable structure while the permitted use is actually taking place, so a marquee or stall left in position between events continues to count against the 28; to protect the allowance, structures should go on the land only on the days it is in use and come off the moment the use ends
• it is 28 days per planning unit, not per activity: you cannot run a car boot sale for 28 days and a festival for another 28 on the same land; it is 28 days total for all temporary uses of that unit in the year
• rotating a use around different fields of the same holding does not multiply the allowance if the fields are one planning unit
• rotating caravans through the same pitch, or making rolling 28-day declarations, does not manufacture continuous occupation: inspectors reject attempts to stretch the right into quasi-permanent residential use, and swapping one unit for another changes nothing about the use of the land
• the 14-day sub-limit bites for markets and motorsport: those cannot use the full 28

What matters is when the land’s normal use is displaced. Days on which the ordinary use of the land is excluded by the temporary use are the days that count, and stretching occupation beyond the limit turns a permitted use into a breach.

Construction caravans are a different right: Part 4 Class A

People often confuse the 28 day rule with the separate right to keep a caravan on a plot during building work. That is not Class B. Part 4, Class A permits putting buildings and moveable structures, a caravan among them, on land where they are needed temporarily in connection with, and for the duration of, building or engineering operations on that land or on adjoining land. The right falls away once the works finish, and the structure has to be removed and the land put back as it was.

The catch is the word “connection”. The caravan has to be genuinely required by the works, whether as a site office, a welfare unit, or security or supervision accommodation, not simply present while they happen. A caravan used as the family home throughout a two-year self-build generally does not qualify under Class A, because the use is residential rather than construction-related, however convenient it is to be on site. That is a common and costly misunderstanding.

Where the position is genuinely construction-related, expect a council to test it: the building contract and programme, the stated purpose of the caravan, and the intended duration are all fair questions, and a caravan that outstays the works it was meant to serve loses the protection. Do not rely on either the 28 day rule or Class A to house a family during a build: neither is designed for it. The safer route is to deal with residential occupation on its own terms; our caravans in a garden page covers living on a plot during construction.

A separate question: the site licence (Schedule 1, paragraph 9)

Everything above is about planning permission. A caravan site can also need a site licence under the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, and that is a wholly separate regime: the two are decided independently, and it is easy to conflate them. On a building site the relevant point is paragraph 9 of Schedule 1 to the 1960 Act: no site licence is required where the land forms part of, or adjoins, land on which building or engineering operations are being carried out, and the caravans are used to accommodate a person or persons employed in connection with those operations. The paragraph carries a condition that is easy to miss: it only applies where planning permission for those operations has been granted, if permission was needed in the first place.

Two features of paragraph 9 are worth understanding. First, it is a licensing exemption, not a planning permission: it removes the need for a site licence, but it does not by itself authorise any change of use of the land; the planning position under Part 4 Class A, or under a permission, still has to be sorted out on its own terms. Second, the word “employed” is not defined in the Act and is generally read fairly liberally, so it need not be confined to a formal contract of employment in the narrowest sense. That breadth is helpful, but it should not be over-read: the accommodation must still be genuinely connected with the building or engineering operations, and the exemption falls away when those operations end.

So what do you actually need?

If you want to place a caravan for someone to live in, whether on a field or on a plot, the 28 day rule will not help, and you need planning permission for the change of use of the land. That is often achievable, particularly where there is a genuine rural or agricultural need, but it is an application, not a permitted development right. Our caravans overview sets out the routes, and is a caravan a building? explains when the structure itself raises separate questions.

If you have used land under the 28 day rule and the council disputes whether you stayed within it, or you want certainty before you start, a lawful development certificate can confirm the position. If a council refuses an application or takes enforcement action, you can appeal: see planning appeals. Because a caravan on site is an ongoing use, a council can move quickly to halt it; our guide to stop notices and breach of condition notices explains when that can happen, and our planning enforcement section covers the process as a whole. There is a fee for a lawful development certificate, charged at the same rate as a full planning application for an existing use and at half that for a proposed use. Fees are set nationally and change from time to time, so see our planning application fees page for the current position. For the underlying permitted development detail, our Part 4 Class B page has the full text and conditions.

28 day rule relevant legislation

The primary sources below are on legislation.gov.uk. Check the “Changes to Legislation” panel at the top of each page for any amendments not yet incorporated into the revised text.

• GPDO 2015, Schedule 2, Part 4: temporary buildings and uses; Class B is the 28-day rule, Class A is the construction-site right and Class BC is temporary campsites
• GPDO (England) (Amendment) Order 2023, SI 2023/747: the amendment that created Class BC from 26 July 2023 and, from 26 July 2024, took caravans and camping out of Class B. We cover the new right on our Part 4, Class BC page
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s55: meaning of development; material change of use
• Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, s29: definition of a caravan; what a caravan site is
• Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, Schedule 1: cases where a site licence is not required; paragraph 9 covers caravans on building and engineering sites

Other Caravan Sections

28 Day Rule Caravan Page Updated: 9th August 2026