How to get domestic curtilage officially defined?

[Mark Lewis]

New house has around 10 acres and some of it is clearly agricultural or woodland. However, there’s quite a lot where it’s hard to say what it is. There’s very little traditional garden because the house is surrounded by undulating land that is a mix of paddocks, hillside, overgrown planting that is bordering on woodland, etc. But mixed in among all that is an old (not been used in years) swimming pool, land that had a giant vegetable plot on it (based on goggle maps) a few years ago, a shed, an old barn that’s been used as a kids games room (pool table/punch bag type thing)….. so clearly bits of it are domestic curtilage….i assume.

So before I start doing things under permitted development for that type of land, how do you find out what is and isn’t domestic? Because I assume it’s more complex than just looking at land registry. Do you ask local planning office to come and look????

[quinny100]

Domestic curtilage is a matter of fact and degree - there is no strict definition.

The local planning authority won't define it for you - until they think you've developed beyond it and they want to take enforcement action.

The correct legal route is to submit a certificate of lawfulness for your proposed development which will require the LPA to give you a legally binding decision as to whether your proposal is permitted development or requires planning permission.

[Mark Lewis]

So that seems a bit of a hassle. So to put a shed up, I need to submit the proposal and get them to agree it’s ok first?

Who would be able to just walk around the place and give me a clue as to what might work? What is that person called that I can google to find one of them! Planning consultant???

[Snow and Rocks]

What is it that you're looking to build?

We’re in a similar situation with the "garden" largely defined by how far into the woods I decide to mow. I just take a sensible approach based on what would be a reasonable curtilage for the house (obviously a stately home would naturally have more than a small cottage) and to build things that fit in nicely and would likely get planning anyway should the worst happen.

I would probably include pretty much anywhere that's got the domestic stuff on it that you list.

[Mark Lewis]

At first just small stuff. Shed and things like that. But longer term a large gym that I guess I just submit the certificate for to see if they’ll go with it as curtilage of the house.

[Snow and Rocks]

I certainly wouldn't bother for small stuff, but yeah probably worth it if you're spending proper money on a building. The switchover point is probably as much down to your personal attitude to risk!

[ewanjp]

One thing to note is that the local authority are unlikely to be hunting round your land trying to find a shed that isn't quite allowed. Get on with the neighbours and you're likely never to have a problem.

[Cheib]

Our old house was a farm house. Had about two acres of what we thought was garden when we bought it, turned out about 1/3 was ex farm land and whilst the whol property had a continuous boundary/hedge it was not considered garden so impacted on what we wanted to do with the site. We only found this out when we retained an architect to look at building a replacement house.

We had to submit a Certificate of Lawfulness together with witness statements (ideally whoever has owned it for the previous ten years) stating it was used as garden.

For us it was important to have it all defined as garden as we were thinking of building a new house and having everything defined as garden was important in terms of siting replacement property. Ended up selling to a developer so was very important…