Is a caravan a building?

 

This is the question that quietly decides a great deal. If a structure is a caravan in law, it is a chattel: stationing it is not development, and planning control bites only if the use of the land changes. If it is a building, the opposite is true: putting it there is operational development in its own right, it counts towards floor-area for fees, it can attract the Community Infrastructure Levy, and it is far easier for a council to enforce against. Same object on the ground; completely different legal footing.

Whether something is a caravan turns on three tests: size, construction and mobility. But passing all three is not quite the end of the story, because of how a unit is installed. This page works through both halves.

 

 

The three tests

 

A structure is a caravan for planning purposes if it meets the definition in section 29(1) of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960: a structure designed or adapted for human habitation, capable of being moved. For a two-section unit, the twin-unit rules in section 13 of the Caravan Sites Act 1968 apply as well. In practice that resolves into three questions.

 

Size

 

A single caravan has no fixed dimensional limit in the 1960 Act: the question is simply whether it is a movable structure adapted for living in. The size limits bite on twin-units. In England, a twin-unit stays within the definition only if, when assembled, it is no more than:

• 20 metres long (65.6 feet), excluding the drawbar
• 6.8 metres wide (22.3 feet)
• 3.05 metres (10 feet) internal height, measured floor to ceiling

Those figures were set by an amendment order in 2006 and are unchanged. Exceed any one of them and the structure is no longer a caravan in law, whatever it is called in the brochure. The same three figures now apply in Wales and in Scotland as well, they simply arrived later: England from October 2006, Wales from November 2007 and Scotland from November 2019.

 

Construction

 

A twin-unit must be built in no more than two sections, each separately constructed, designed to be assembled on site by bolts, clamps or similar. The final act of assembly is the joining of the two halves on the plot. The sections do not have to be habitable or finished before assembly, and, importantly, there is no rule that they must be built away from the site. A unit constructed in two halves and bolted together in position can still be a caravan.

 

Mobility

 

The structure must be physically capable of being moved by road once assembled. Three points trip people up here, and all three run the same way:

• it is the theoretical capability of the structure that matters, not whether it is ever actually moved: a static that sits in one spot for twenty years is still a caravan if it could be moved
• wheels are not required; being liftable by crane onto a low-loader is enough
• section 13(1) says in terms that a twin-unit is still a caravan even if it cannot lawfully be moved on a highway when assembled, so the fact that an oversize unit would need an escort, or could not get down the lane, does not disqualify it. The mobility test looks at the structure, not at the route to the site

What defeats mobility is turning the unit into something that could not be moved without being taken apart: building it into brick or block skirting that is structural, bolting it to a poured raft foundation, or otherwise fixing it so that removal would mean demolition. At that point it starts to look like a building.

 

Passing all three, and still being development

 

Here is the trap. A structure can satisfy every limb of the caravan definition and still amount to a building, because “building” in planning law is judged separately. The courts assess it on three factors of their own: size, permanence, and degree of physical attachment to the land. That is the approach confirmed by the Court of Appeal in Skerritts of Nottingham Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions [2000] 2 PLR 102. The three factors themselves started life in a 1949 rating case, Cardiff Rating Authority v Guest Keen Baldwin’s Iron and Steel Co Ltd [1949] 1 KB 385, and were carried across into planning by Barvis Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment (1971) 22 P&CR 710.

 

Skerritts is the case people run into when they assume that taking something away for part of the year keeps it outside planning control. A hotel put a marquee on its lawn every year, roughly 40 metres long, 17 metres wide and 5 metres to the ridge, and took it down each winter. The Court of Appeal held it was a building. Permanence does not mean 365 days a year, and it does not turn on what the owner intended: it is a matter of degree between the temporary and the everlasting, and the real question is whether the thing stays put long enough to be of significance in planning terms. Something there for a substantial part of the year is permanent enough, and removing it seasonally does not dodge control.

So the more a “caravan” is dug in, underpinned, connected by permanent services and clearly meant to stay, the more readily it can be treated as a building, and erecting a building is operational development needing permission regardless of any change of use. The general position was set out in Measor v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (1998) 4 PLR 93. A caravan owner there argued that his caravans were buildings, because at the time that would have given him a shorter route to immunity from enforcement. The court held they were not: a mobile caravan will generally fail the building test on permanence and attachment, and it does not become a building simply because the Caravan Acts happen to call it a structure. The judge was careful, though, not to say that a caravan could never be a building.

 

That last point matters, because mobility is not the get-out people think it is. In Save Woolley Valley Action Group Ltd v Bath and North East Somerset Council [2012] EWHC 2161 (Admin) a council decided that large poultry units were not buildings, because they sat on skids and could be towed round the field. The court held that was too narrow. Being movable does not settle it: a tower crane that travelled on a track round a building site was still a building, and something can be a building without being fixed to the land at all. What counts is whether the thing stays put long enough to matter in planning terms, and units that sat in a field indefinitely did, however often they were shuffled about.

 

So the two cases pull in the same direction for a caravan owner: a genuine caravan is usually not a building, but do not assume that being able to move it is the end of the argument. It is a question of fact and degree every time.

 

Why the distinction matters in practice

 

Getting this right is not academic. If the structure is a caravan, siting it is not development and there is usually no planning fee for the object itself and no Community Infrastructure Levy on it. If it is a building, you have operational development: it needs permission in its own right, its floor area counts, CIL can be engaged, and an enforcement notice requiring its removal is comparatively straightforward for a council to sustain. Misjudging which side of the line you are on is one of the more expensive mistakes in this area.

 

Two regimes, kept separate

 

One more source of confusion worth clearing up. The Caravan Acts and the planning Acts do different jobs. The Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 licenses the site: how it is laid out and run. The Town and Country Planning Act 1990 controls development and use. A caravan can be perfectly lawful under one and unlawful under the other. An enforcement notice that muddles the two, citing a licensing breach to attack a planning matter or the reverse, is on shaky ground. If you are on the receiving end of enforcement, check which regime the council is actually relying on.

 

Not sure which side of the line you are on?

 

If it genuinely matters, because a fee, a CIL liability or an enforcement risk turns on it, a lawful development certificate can put the question beyond argument before you commit. And if a council has already refused, or served an enforcement notice, you can challenge it on appeal; see our guide to planning appeals. 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 our planning application fees page has the current position. For the wider picture, return to our caravans overview.

 

 

Caravan or Building 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.

• Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, s29: definition of a caravan
• Caravan Sites Act 1968, s13: twin-unit caravans, construction and mobility
• Caravan Sites Act 1968 and Social Landlords (Permissible Additional Purposes) (England) Order 2006 (Definition of Caravan) (Amendment) (England) Order 2006, SI 2006/2374: the twin-unit dimensions in England
• Caravan Sites Act 1968 (Amendment) (Wales) Order 2007, SI 2007/3163: the same dimensions in Wales
• Caravan Sites Act 1968 (Amendment of Definition of Caravan) (Scotland) Order 2019, SSI 2019/295: the same dimensions in Scotland
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s55: meaning of development and building operations. Note s336(1), which defines a building as including any structure or erection

Other Caravan Sections

 

 

 

Caravan or Building Page Updated: 9th August 2026