Mark Glamping Business Plan Made Easy

Mark glamping business plan

hello and good evening everybody and welcome to the first business barn webinar thank you very much for joining us um just as to introduce ourselves my name's rosie and i'm the business manager at the business barn um and hannah hannimal is the guest this evening or i should say the host rather and hannah is the director of the business barn and molenko and i will hand you over across to hannah in a moment um but before we start um i just want to check a few things with you and just explain how the sort of session is going to work um so hopefully you can all hear us okay um in the on your right panel of your screen you should have the option to raise your hand and just so we can check from our our end that the sound is working if although all of you could just click that button and just raise your hand that would be brilliant and we can just check everything's working that's brilliant everyone seems to be okay so that's great um also in that panel you'll see that there's a drop down for questions now um anytime during the session please do feel free to ask your questions whenever they pop into your head we will keep them till the session and we'll ask canada those at the end and but whenever they pop in um do just do just ask and the last thing is to say is all the attendees all of you guys in this on a listening any background noise any children screaming any cows blaring whatever won't be heard um it's just by by us or any of the other attendees so um you're absolutely fine so without further ado i will pass you across to hannah to kick off the session hi everyone thank you rosie that's uh that's brilliant so i'm afraid you're all our guinea pigs because this is our first webinar we've ever done and certainly my first webinar so uh so so we'll see how smoothly it goes i was having to think a minute ago just to try and think about how i can make um a webinar on planning interesting uh came to the conclusion that no webinar on planning is interesting and so i thought well at least i can just try and make it fairly painless we'll skip through it fairly quickly and then obviously if you've got the questions at the end then i'm more than happy to answer whatever i can um so let's just see if this works so um i thought perhaps just for a moment i would introduce myself i set up the business model and co um nine years ago so we are sort of land agents planning consultants royal charter surveyors over the last few years we specialised in rural planning and now um sort of 60 of what we do is planning for diverse vocation we do a huge amount of damping and things we work across england and wales in lots and lots of local authorities principally we're midlands based but we do go further afield as well um one of the things that we're quite proud of is is we have a a really good success rate and the reason for that is is because we don't take on things that we don't think we can win so we don't take on jobs that we don't think we can be successful with so we try very hard to get it right but we are honest about your chances um so if we don't think something is likely to be able to achieve a planning consent we'll be fairly upfront with you um i know that some of you may be further afield i'm not sure where you're all from and some of you um you know you might not necessarily be able to to work with us um but i'm more than happy to point you in the right direction if it's just to get you started i'll give you some pointers um no obligation or even if you're local there's still no obligation um so if it doesn't lead to anything but please feel free to ask because because i'd like to be able to help if we can so um very quickly we've got a running order just about 20 minutes now of of the things that we sort of discussed we're going to cover when you do and don't need planning permission and so on and who decides a planning application how to make a successful planning application um and sort of some likely costs and things and then as rosie said we shall do some questions at the end um i will skip through it fairly quickly just to try and get through what we need to in 20 minutes so the first thing is is uh as we set out do do you need planning permission that's the question it's a big question i wanted to just give you a tiny bit of terminology before we um before i go into that question because it just helps kind of um give you a little bit it helps you distinguish it when we go through and talk about various elements so operational development this is where you build something this is something that is attached to the land in some way you've built something so the treehouse for example that is physically changing the land or that's that's attached to it you've built it into the land building a house is operational development the there's there's um that's the difference between a change of use so a change of use is not physically changing the land in any way you are changing the use of it so an example of that would be something like a shepherd's hut it's not attached to the ground in any way you haven't physically changed that ground but you are no longer using that site for agricultural purposes you are now using it for um you know for a shepherd's hut for for tourism purposes so that is a change of use um occasionally a change of use comes along with operational development for example in gamping you might quite often have um say say huts or pods or whatever um and then you might have to build a shower block or a toilet or something to go with it so you might have those two things go hand in hand um permitted development is something a term that you'll hear quite frequently in planning permitted development is when there's an overarching grant of permission for something um you'll be familiar with it agricultural buildings for example have 28 days 28 day notices that's committed development but with regard to glamping basically there is very limited or i can't really think of any examples where committed development applies so for the rest of this we shall forget about committed development but i just wanted to mention it as um sort of to give you an outline of what it is so do you need planning permission so if we're talking about operational development anything that you build then pretty much in every situation you will always need planning permission even things like small shower and toilet blocks and we have done planning applications for really piddly little things which um seem ridiculous but are um is required so so anything that you build is a yes uh in terms of a change of use um if you are doing things uh for com we're almost always here talking about commercial or or a business um if you wanted to put that shepherd's hut in your garden um to use it as a granny annex or something that's different so what i'm talking about now is if you're if you're going to intending to use your shepherd turtle or pods or whatever for a commercial business so if you want to change the use of some land or the field of an area of land um to to site shepherd huts pods camping caravans in on the whole you will need planning permission for that change of use but occasionally there are some exemptions for the change of use and i'll just talk um to you about those very quickly now there's something called a certified caravan and camping license um there are certain organizations um exempted organizations the two most popular and main ones that you'll probably have heard of are the caravan club and the camping and caravanning club now if you join and become a member of those they have uh basically permission to issue you with a site license um that you don't then have to apply for planning permission for so they can issue you with a license if you're a member and abide by their rules and so on for up to five caravans and up to 10 tents on a site so you can do that without planning permission providing that you are a member of one of these um exempted organizations there are a couple of limitations to that for example you can't have one caravan there for more than um or any of the caravans can't be there for more than 28 days consecutively um but the member organizations would go through that with you at that time if you were interested but it is quite a useful thing to to to be aware because if you just wanted to go into it in a small way and start off on that basis you don't need express planning permission you can get this license through the um through some of those organizations one of the other exemptions is you can do from a planning point of view you can do anything you like you can change the use of your land for up to 28 days per year without the need for planning commission so if i use the example of let's say a festival or something like that your neighbor holds a festival and you thought you might offer glamping in the next door field over the period of the festival you could have a few for a few days before during the festival and a few days afterwards and as long as that doesn't amount to more than 28 days you don't need planning permission for that occasion similarly if you'd sort of got pop-up type of things like bell tents or something and you just wanted to use them for i don't know 10 weekends a year um you know let's say friday saturday sunday or something and that amounts to 21 days um then you wouldn't be planning for that either so up to 28 days per year as a general rule you can use your land for anything else without the express need for planning permission if you don't put either of those two exemptions then we go back into the to the change of use and yes you do need permission who decides a planning application um you submit a planning application to your local authority which is normally the sort of you know who you pay your council tax to so whichever council that is generally speaking most applications are decided by a planning officer at the local council in the planning department occasionally if there are particularly large schemes or contentious schemes it can go to planning committee which is where the local councillors decide it and if it's refused to either of those two things then you can appeal it obviously you only appeal if you think that the council are wrong so that's the sort of process that it goes through um what i wanted to talk to you about was if you are in the position which i presume most of you are of thinking about setting up a damping site um it is in your best interest to give a little bit of consideration to whether you think you will be able to achieve planning before you start making a planning application so i just wanted to cover with you the sorts of things that are taken into account when when the planning officer is determining your your application so the first thing to say is um the first thing a planning officer will do is look at what their local plan says about your proposal and you can look that up by going uh onto your local council you can go into the planning policy section and somewhere in the depths of the website will be their local plan and in the local plan there is almost certainly a section on how they deal there's a policy on tourism and leisure or that type of of thing so they will um it will it will basically stay in there what how the council feel about uh and how they feel about leisure and tourism activities so that will help to tell you as to whether your proposal your project is acceptable to the council in principle so once you've achieved that so let's say you've read it yes broadly speaking your local council does support leisure tourism activities which broadly speaking most of them do for their economic benefits you then um a council will uh look at a principle with sort of three hats on a little bit there's a number of things but um they they look at it they count sustainability and and when they determine this application they will think of it from in the economic terms social and environmental um and so economic for example is things like you know and and gambling is always good for the economy uh it brings money into the rural economy people are coming self-catering and they're spending whilst they're staying with you social and environmental probably fairly neutral um but certainly glamping and tourism accommodation always have some some good economic um benefits so once you've decided that is the council going to accept this in principle are they are they going to be looking at this you know reasonably favorably a council will then take into account um what's called material considerations and these are kind of the if you say the slightly boring things but these are the other planning matters and you the onus is on you the applicant to make sure that you can demonstrate and explain to the planning officer how you can make these planning matters acceptable to them so for example i won't you you can obviously either either write those down or have a look at them afterwards but principally these are the types of things as a planning consultant or when we're preparing applications that we um we look at and work through you know is what you're proposing suitable in the location you're proposing it is it of a suitable size and scale is or is it too big um what does the design look like you know you haven't hopefully painted something with bright pink with yellow spots you know in the main it needs to be something that sits in the in the surroundings nicely who's it going to affect residential the landscape you know what's it going to look like in the wider surroundings and so on some of those things don't always come into account things like heritage that would only be relevant if say for example you were proposing um it next to on a on a designated heritage site or perhaps maybe next to enlisted building or something like that so there are some that won't uh come into play so when a planning officer looks at policy and then the material considerations what they do is they undertake what they call the planning balance so they effectively look at benefits on one side of this scales versus the harm or impact on the other side of this scales so so all the benefits which are all the economic things that we know um versus is there going to be any harm or is there going to be any impact by you doing or carrying out your proposal the good thing about glamping on the whole is that it's relatively small scale relatively low key and on the whole most of these material considerations can be made acceptable so more often than not your benefits of the economic development and everything else far outweigh any potential harm or impact having said that there are what i call the three deal breakers now these are three things um going back onto the material considerations a lot of those are negotiable for example if the council don't like the design you can tweak it if they think the scale is too big you could reduce it these three deal breakers it's a yes or a no and if it's a no it's very difficult to get your project to go any further these are three things that are basically not overcomeable so the three things are flooding if you're in a flood risk zone highways you have to be able to demonstrate and this is really important that you can get safe access to your site um and that is uh that's that's that's a that's a a yes or a name um in terms of designations there are a few designations green belt if you're in the green belt that can be really difficult to overcome because basically the starting presumption if you're in the green belt is uh the answer is no and you've got to be able to demonstrate very special circumstances um so there are a few other designations like aonb ssis and things um at the end i'm going to tell you how you can look all of those up so those are the three deal breakers look at those first um if you come to a stop on any of those three you know don't necessarily spend any money until you know you've investigated those three because those could just scupper a project altogether so when you make a planning application you're submitting it to the local authority this is just a short list of some of the things that you'd be expected to provide you obviously have to fill out a set of forms there is block and location plans showing it in different scales as to where your sighting is you'd write a planning statement which is basically bringing all of these things into a statement and setting that out to the planning officer um design and access sometimes you can incorporate that into the planning statement and that just is is what it says talking about that in more detail they often want to know about water management particularly foul drainage which is a delightful thing to have to go into detail over but again sometimes you're in more remote locations uh how are you going to deal with the drainage and that is something that the planning officers will want to know and then uh you may need to submit sort of technical supporting surveys depending on your site and depending what it is you're proposing which i should come on to now um sorry if you can't see that terribly well it's not a great photo but um in terms of the costs uh generally speaking the smaller and lower key the less surveys you will have to provide um if you have got an unusual um an unusual proposal something uh you know a little bit far out there in terms of design or if it's a large scheme lots of units or if it's in a high impact location something like on the side of a aomb then you'll probably require additional surveys and have to go to extra lengths to demonstrate to the council that all of those material considerations uh can be dealt with so these are just some typical uh costings for you um i'm afraid all of it is a bit of as you know how long is a piece of string so they're just indicative um the one thing i would say obviously is is talk if you do decide to use a planning consultant talk to them about what it is that you um that you you need um there's a bit of an offset in terms of you know going in with more or less but you'll be guided so those are the technical reports you'll have to pay a planning fee to the council for a change of use it's 462 pounds for operational development it depends on the footprint so relatively small things are you know a few hundred pounds if you're getting into big schemes then it could potentially um rise quite highly but um that's that's uh difficult to tell you um because it there is so much planning consultants again huge range if you just need a little bit of advice and you need them to write you a you know covering letter you could be talking about a few hundred pounds you're talking about a big scheme where they need to coordinate lots of things closer to the 4 000 a couple of examples for you this is a very basic one um if you just need with a couple of pods as i say you might need a basic ecological survey planning to the council if you decide to use a consultant if not you can do it for less than a thousand pounds probably um compare that to let's say um a larger higher impact type of thing um in a designation in a designated area again i won't run through it some of these you'll need some of these you won't but you could spend five or six thousand on it on a bigger scheme i just want it's very very uh how long it's piece of string but you know you could do it for less than a thousand it could cost you six or seven um but you know if you want a budget you could budge it for somewhere in the middle of that um we always do these top tips now the professional advice obviously i'm a kind of consultant but i promise you that i'm not just trying to um seek extra work here the um the thing that a planning consultant can do for you is give you strategic advice sometimes you may not always be able to get what you want straight away and a planning consultant may take you from a to b but you'll end up at c is where you want to get to and sometimes that tactical um strategic approach actually can make the difference between a successful application and not um the planning consultant will also make that planning statement for you so they will be they will write all that planning balance and all of that about the waiting and so on they will do that with their experience of of what's important to your local authority more than one way to skin a cat basically sometimes if you can't necessarily get what you want straight away sometimes there are other things that you can do first to make it then acceptable when you put in another application so don't go our advice generally is don't go to the council and tell them everything and flirt it all out at the start take some tactical advice um decide on a strategy and then sometimes you can approach the council but um sort of get your ducks in a row first if you've got a bigger scheme and you need to do lots of surveys then obviously ask you know get two or three quotes for each one uh do your homework um and by that you can do lots of research all applications are online so you can look and i would suggest that you look a couple of things up so you can go on and you can look for other applications that are similar to yours in your area and you can look at the planning offices report you can look at the approval or refusal notice and you can look at what other people have submitted by way of additional technical reports and so on so you can look and see you could broadly find out what's going to be expected of yours by looking at other people's uh assume that you probably aren't going to get planning permission and then justify it that way around i find that you don't take anything for granted and that you put more information into your into your application as i said before principally glamping sites generally the councils like but if you work on sort of the the other basis and then you are generally on the front foot get tactical and if necessary get political what i mean by that is if you have an application which you think might be a little bit contentious or somebody is not going to like it or maybe you need to speak to your local parish council or to the local district councillor and get them on site and lastly either you or your planning agent should get to know the planning officer and speak to them reasonably regularly through your planning application um don't just submit it and and wait for the notice wait for the decision notice talk to them ask them if they need any more information and build a relationship with them because um that will enormously help him in a successful outcome these are just a couple of things on the last slide couple of things places for you to to go away and get some do your research magic maps is an amazing website just google magic maps and on there you can find things like all the listed buildings you can find green belts you can find what designated areas you're in um so so those deal breakers that we were talking about are you in any destinations you can get that all on magic maps you can put in your postcode so jot that one down magic maps is really useful for a lot of things if you want to if you don't know which your local council is or where the site is there is a finder a checker and also then obviously you can then just go and find your local council and generally speaking it's on the first page you can search for planning applications if you want to find out if you're in a flood zone you just just google literally that's all written down flood that for planning and it will come up and you can put your postcode in and it will tell you and it will give you a nice fancy map the planning portal again google planning portal there's quite a lot of general information on there which is useful but also you can find a fee calculator to work out how much it's going to cost you in the application to the council in terms of other places to find help like i said a planning consultant will often give you some free initial advice so so use it and abuse it um and get that strategy first before you apply to the council um so i think that that is it um and really just yeah any questions my um my phone number is on here my emails on there and as i said at the start please feel free to ask any questions um you know no obligation at all i just you know if i can help i will i think that's it rosie oh brilliant thank you very much hannah so there's there is a couple of questions that will come in and please do send them in um the next couple of minutes and we'll read them out and so there's a couple from catherine that you could probably answer um simultaneously so um the first one is is a uh seen as a tent and then um does a yet in someone's residential garden used for airbnb require the same planning permission as in a field is it standard is this standard commercial use um that's a really good question a yet tent doesn't really have a planning definition as far as i'm aware um so i mean i would call it um there are things like caravans have definitions um i'm not sure that a tent has a definition um and i'm not sure that that is that you particularly need a definition for it um in terms of whether you need planning if it's in if it's for the purpose of a of a business if you're if you have got it on airbnb um with the intent to run it as a business and take a business income from it even if it's in your garden then yes in theory you should have planning permission for it i would say that you could you could probably you can have a yurt in your garden if it is incidental to your own house use for example you know if you put granny out there and she sleeps in it um so you can have that as an incidental use to your own house and maybe that's what you say if anybody asks um but i think actually if the intent is to run it with the business then in theory you should have planning brilliant thank you um ian has actually given us some um sort of helpful hints for other people so um he said that timing can be very critical for ecological surveys if if required um they having recently been granted full planning permission for glamping pods we were unawares by the positive interest from the local news media reporters routinely troll planning applications and it would be useful for landowners to prepare press releases including photographs in advance to cover positive and potential negative media interest if the planning application is successful a well-worded press press release can result in good free publicity so that's that's probably quite a good point from a sort of pr marketing point of view if you can get people on your side then you're on to a winner almost um almost already hannah would you sort of agree with that well all of that's really really good and it's actually um i hadn't the the media side of it is not something that i thought of so so brilliant that you mention it the ecological thing is absolutely right as well there are the certain surveys have to be done at certain times of the year so again um you know i suppose basically give yourself plenty of time um the types of things that are going to be relevant to glamping are the dreaded mutes um things like uh potentially certain i don't know maybe certain foreign former actually just come up with badges on one as well and of course all these various um things have have life cycles and breeding cycles and everything um in case of bats hibernation cycles so yeah so you've got to do them at certain times of the year so that's a really really good point um i have got a uh i've got a um what's the word like a timetable list so if anybody wants that i can make sure that that goes i haven't ever put it on but we can we can put that onto the business barn website so as that's available um so we can we can do that and that sets out when the survey windows are for all the different speeches brilliant no that's that'd be brilliant um another question from claire and this is in relation to shepherd huts um do you have any idea about composting toilets or eco shower requirements or planning commissions so do those kind of things need planning permission uh you will need to be able to tell the planning officers how you're going to deal with it um what they do is they one of the when you submit a planning application there are a number of what what's called statutory council teas that get asked to comment on your application um and one of those generally is sort of either regulatory authorities or there are specialist drainage engineers and generally speaking they will look at what you're going to do with water across the site so so that could be it could be um sort of roof water um generally speaking in shepherd's huts and things it's very very minimal so you wouldn't have to worry too much so that's clean water in terms of your foul water you will have to just be able to show how you're going to deal with it composting toilets are acceptable to the council so are things like um sewage treatment plants things like cloud gestures and things like that um you just have to so they will be interested you just have to be able to again um either on a plan or through sort of a you know text description just be able to kind of um explain it only needs to be fairly simple but explain how the how the toilets are going to work and where the waste is going to go who's going to pick it up how frequently that sort of thing so composting toilets are fine as our sewers treatment plants and things it's just a case of explaining it to the council and we just got time for a couple more questions um tom's asked a question in relation to um large marquees can large marquees be left up all summer if only used for the 20 to 28 days or less oh that is a really good question um i think that you would probably i would probably say not um because you can't then use it for agriculture and don't tell me you're gonna put a sheep in there or something um but i would say that you are then excluding the agricultural use for the time that it is up so i would say that you're changing the use for over 28 days um i suspect probably some smart alec might come along and say there's a way around it um but especially in the case of a large white marquee you're more than it's going to be quite noticeable as well so it's not something that can be hidden um so i would suggest probably not but it's a good question very good question and the final question tonight is from zoe um do you know roughly the likelihood of planning approval for a small glamping site so a maximum of three pods um in an area of outstanding natural beauty and is it worth continuing um yeah it's it adds um it basically the area of outstanding natural beauty makes it a higher a higher bar um you things like things like small pods um i would i we have been successful with small pods i'm always i've got one at the moment which is for like some large white yurts and they're insisting on it being yes even though we've suggested that might not be the best thing so i'm a bit nervous about large white yurts um if we're talking about sort of small brownie colored pods that are wooden you know they pretty well blend into the landscape with the aonb it is quite a high designation it's quite a high bar to overcome councils are quite precious about the aonb so what you have got to do is you just got to go over and above what you would normally have to do in terms of demonstrating to the council that there is either limited or negligible impact on the aonb um in terms of uh visual impact in terms of you know sort of actually uh um you know sort of lands any detriment to the landscape character that sort of thing um and sometimes you it might be better or it may be um prudent to get a couple of sort of independent reports so you can get something called a landscape and visual impact assessment done by specific by specialists and they will basically kind of score the the impact of your project and then make an assessment of it independently against the aomb and that can help reassure a planning officer that um that it is going to be acceptable um very much think about the design and think about the scale but three three smallish pods in an aonb i think i'd be going for that yeah yeah obviously you know subject to not seeing the site or anything but uh that wouldn't necessarily put me off just just by hearing that no fab and i promise this is the last question so um in dropship again sorry this is from ian again so in shropshire glamping pods are treated as caravans for planning purposes would i then need a local authority caravan site operating license oh i'm a little bit out of my comfort zone if i'm absolutely honestly i'm sorry my kind of involvement tends to finish it's about the planning um i um i don't know is the answer i think if you've got planning permission um yeah sorry sorry for being thick on the last question you'd have to perhaps maybe if you've got the planning commission in place um then i would think that you could probably ask to ask the question to the council without too many issues sorry for not being helpful on that one um if you want me to um i do know one of our one of the guys that we work with with the business barn ted i don't know whether he's on rosie no i don't think ted we've got a chat that we do some work with uh ted who does quite a lot with the the caravan and camping clubs and so on and he's pretty familiar with it so ian if you'd like us to we're more than happy to ask ted the question and um come back to you brilliant well i think that we've used that most of your time so thank you very much hannah and and thank you very much for um everyone who's joined this evening if you have got any other questions feel free to ping hannah an email and her email address is still on the screen i think um on the business fund we do also have a forum on there so if you wanted to sort of post your experiences or you've got other questions that you would like hannah or other planning consultants to work with to answer then please do take a look at that and the forum has been designed to create some of the interaction and um conversation between everyone so that's a great resource and we also have another um glamping focus webinar coming up on the 2nd of july um sarah riley will be covering um factors to consider when starting glamping sites so not just planning but lots of other focuses so if that's of interest keep an eye out for that on the website um and again we thank you very much for joining us and we hope you've enjoyed it and have a great evening thank you very much thank you bye everybody you