A caravan in a garden or annexe

“Can I keep a caravan in my garden?” is the most common caravan question there is, and the honest answer is: usually yes, until the way you use it changes. A caravan sitting in your garden is not a building, and keeping it there for purposes connected with your home is not development. The problem only starts when the caravan stops being part of your household and becomes a separate home in its own right.

This page explains where that line falls: the curtilage rule, what “incidental” really means, how an annexe for a relative is treated, and the planning-unit test the courts use to decide whether a second dwelling has quietly appeared in your garden.

The curtilage rule

Section 55(2)(d) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 says that using land within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse for a purpose incidental to the enjoyment of that house is not development. Your garden is normally within your curtilage, so keeping and using a caravan there for storage, as a hobby space, somewhere to work or for the children to sit with friends needs no planning permission. You can store a touring caravan on the drive between trips without a second thought.

The key word is incidental: the use has to be reasonably connected with the enjoyment of the house as a home. A caravan used as extra space for the household is incidental. A caravan lived in as a separate dwelling is not, and that is where permission comes back into the picture.

Incidental, ancillary, independent

Three words do a lot of work here, and it is worth being precise about them:

• incidental: a use that arises from enjoying the house, of a scale and nature that reasonably attaches to it; storage, a hobby, a home office. Covered by section 55(2)(d), no permission needed
• ancillary: the caravan is used for genuine living purposes (a bedroom, a place for a relative) but as part of the same single household, sharing the life of the main house; usually still no material change of use
• independent: the caravan functions as a separate dwelling, with its own household living self-containedly; this is a material change of use and needs permission

Incidental and ancillary get used as if they mean the same thing. They do not, and the difference decides which rule you are relying on. Section 55(2)(d) uses only the word incidental, and the courts read it as meaning subordinate to the use of the house as a house. In Wallington v Secretary of State for Wales [1991] 1 PLR 87 the Court of Appeal held that the words “as such” carry real weight: the question is whether the use is incidental to the enjoyment of the dwellinghouse as a dwellinghouse, judged objectively, not whatever the occupier happens to feel about it. Keeping 44 dogs at home as a hobby failed that test.

An annexe does not go through section 55(2)(d) at all. It works because there has been no material change of use in the first place, so the question of whether the use is incidental never arises. That is what happened in Uttlesford District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment and White [1991] 2 PLR 76, also reported at [1992] JPL 171, where a garage had been converted for the owner’s elderly relative. She had her own bedroom, bathroom, small kitchen, somewhere to sit and her own front door. The council argued that a self-contained unit must by definition be a second dwelling. The court disagreed: the deputy judge could find no reason in law why such accommodation should become a separate planning unit from the main house, so long as the property stayed in single family occupation. It was a matter of fact and degree for the inspector.

So the distinction between ancillary and independent is where most disputes sit, and self-contained facilities do not settle it. A useful way to test it: if the main house were taken away, could the caravan still function as somebody’s home on its own, and is it in truth being lived in as a separate household? If yes, you are looking at an independent dwelling, whatever anyone calls it.

An annexe for a relative

Housing a parent or adult child in a caravan in the garden is common, and often lawful, provided the arrangement stays genuinely ancillary to the main house. Shared facilities, comings and goings between the two, a single household spread across house and caravan: that tends to stay on the right side of the line. Sealed off as a self-contained unit with its own independent life, it tends to cross it. There is no fixed rule; it is a matter of fact and degree, and councils look at how the whole property is actually used, not at what the caravan is called.

The planning unit: has a second dwelling appeared?

When the question is whether a separate dwelling has come into being, the courts look at the planning unit. The leading authority is Burdle v Secretary of State for the Environment [1972] 1 WLR 1207, also reported at [1972] 3 All ER 240, where the court set out a working approach: assume the whole unit of occupation, your house and its garden together, is the planning unit, unless and until some smaller part can be recognised as being used, both physically and functionally, as a separate thing. A caravan tucked in the garden and shared by the household is part of the single planning unit. A caravan fenced off, separately occupied and functioning on its own becomes a separate planning unit, a second dwelling, and that change needs permission.

This is why simply moving a relative into a self-contained caravan can require permission even though nothing was built: the use of the land has changed, a new planning unit has appeared, and that is development.

Building your own home while a caravan sits on the plot

A frequent, legitimate use: living in a caravan on a plot while building a house on it. Where a caravan is genuinely required for purposes connected with the building operations, housing the builder or the owner during construction, its presence can be incidental to that development, for as long as the works genuinely last. The right depends on there being live building works with permission, and it falls away when they finish. It is not a route to living in a caravan on a plot indefinitely, and councils do challenge caravans that outstay the construction they were meant to serve.

Settling it in advance

Because so much turns on fact and degree, this is an area where it pays not to guess. If you want certainty that a proposed caravan use is lawful, before a neighbour complains or the council asks questions, a lawful development certificate for a proposed use settles it up front. If a use is already established and unchallenged, a certificate of lawfulness for an existing use can confirm it. And if the council refuses, you can appeal: see 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 the caravans overview.

Garden Caravan 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.

• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s55: meaning of development, and the s55(2)(d) curtilage exemption. Note s55(3)(a), which treats the use of a single dwellinghouse as two or more separate dwellinghouses as a material change of use
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s171B: time limits for enforcement against a change of use
• Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, s29: definition of a caravan

Other Caravan Sections

Garden Caravan Page Updated: 7th August 2026