A small landowner cut a new entrance into their rural field, stabilised an access track, and quietly got on with growing vegetables and planting trees. The council noticed during a separate enquiry — and asked for retrospective consent.
Our client owns a small parcel of countryside land — a few small vegetable plots, a barbecue hut, some young fruit trees, a couple of newly planted oaks, and longer-term ambitions for a wildlife pond and more native species planting. They use the land themselves; it isn't a commercial enterprise. To get vehicles in safely, they removed a short section of existing hedgerow to create a new entrance off the lane, set back roughly seven metres from the kerbside, and put down a stabilised track. Drainage was carefully maintained with a large-bore plastic culvert pipe under the entrance. Hedges adjacent to the new entrance are kept trimmed.
None of this felt like "development" in the dramatic sense — it was the kind of thing rural landowners do all the time. But forming a new vehicular access onto a public highway is a planning matter, and the council picked up on it during an unrelated enquiry about a possible agricultural building on the same site.
Two things were going on. First, the new access itself unambiguously needs planning permission — whether it's hedge removal, the formation of a new opening onto the highway, or the laying of a track, none of it falls within permitted development for a small non-agricultural land holding. Second, the client also wanted to apply for a small agricultural equipment store on the site, and an earlier prior approval notification had already been rejected because the council didn't accept the holding qualified for agricultural permitted development rights.
Putting the access right first — on its own, as a clean, focused application — was the obvious sequencing. With consent in hand, the conversation about further development on the site becomes much easier.
The risks on a rural access case generally cluster around two issues: highway safety (can vehicles enter and leave safely without endangering other road users?) and landscape character (does the new entrance harm the rural setting?). The first was largely answered by the existing speed survey. The second was straightforward in this case: the access is set back from the kerb, the entrance opening is modest, the surrounding hedgerow is being actively maintained, and the use of the land for small-scale horticulture and wildlife planting is the kind of soft, low-intensity activity that planning policy generally supports.
We're preparing a focused retrospective full planning application for the access alone, including:
Once that consent is secured, we plan to come back to the council with a separate application for the agricultural equipment store and any secondary access — with the highway question by then fully bedded in.
Alongside the planning statement, we prepared and submitted a full set of scaled architectural drawings — site location plan, block plan, and existing and proposed elevations and floor plans where relevant — giving the case officer a clear, accurate and measurable picture of the development to assess against policy.
"It's only a gate" is a sentence councils hear a lot. Forming a new access onto a public highway is one of the things planning law cares about most, regardless of how informal the land use behind it feels. Get it right first, and the rest of your plans for the land become much simpler.
Field accesses, gated entrances, stabilised tracks and rural driveways are some of the most common rural retrospective cases we see — and most of them are approvable, with the right framing. If a council officer has flagged your access, the first conversation with us is free.
We'll tell you, honestly, what your options are — before you spend a penny.