Do You Need Garden Rooms Planning Permission? 

What you need to know about planning rules and whether you need planning permission for your dream garden room.

You’ve done your research and found your dream garden room, you’ve thought long and hard about where you want to put it and are already dreaming about spending time in it. But before you buy your garden room, you need to check if you need to get planning permission.

Planning Permission for a garden room

Modern garden rooms don’t typically need planning permission because they fall under class E of the permitted development rules. In relation to garden rooms, these are the key factors for staying within the rules:

• The garden room is used for a purpose incidental to the main house (e.g., as an office or gym, not as a separate dwelling). 
• It’s located in the rear garden. 
• It covers no more than 50% of the total area of land around the original house. 
• It’s not directly on the property boundary. 
• It’s not higher than 2.5 meters if within 2 meters of a boundary. 
• The structure is not in front of the principal elevation facing a highway. 

NOTE: All our buildings are manufactured to meet the 2.5m height Planning restriction and are no higher than 2.3m to view our Hully Pod dimensions please visit our Pod comparison page

Permitted Development for householders – Technical Guidance

We strongly advise that you read the technical guidance document produced by the UK Government to help you understand how permitted development rules could apply to your circumstances. 

View ‘Permitted development for householders – Technical guidance’ on Gov.uk

Building Regulations UK

Do I need building regulations approval for a garden room?

The most important factors for building regulations are as follows:

If the floor area of your garden room is less than 15 square meters internally and contains no sleeping accommodation then Building Regulations (except Part P for Electrical works) will not normally apply. Internally, the floor area can be between 15 – 30 square meters.

As long as the garden room contains no sleeping accommodation and is at least one meter from any boundary, you will not be required to apply for building regulation approval. In the vast majority of cases, garden rooms will be exempt from requiring approval under the Building Regulations if they meet certain exemption criteria.

View ‘Is building regulations approval needed for an outbuilding?’ on Gov.uk

Complying with Building Regulations.

Good news! In most cases, you don’t need to worry about either. Here’s the deal:

Planning Permission:

Your garden building is usually considered “permitted development” under Class E. This means you’re good to go without planning permission, as long as you follow a few simple rules:

Building Regulations:

These are even simpler:

Now, there are a few exceptions and extra details, especially if you live in a conservation area or have a listed property. But for most folks, that’s the gist of it.

At Hully Pods, we’re all about making your life easier. We design our garden rooms to fit these rules, so you can skip the headache of planning applications. Plus, we build them to last and follow good practices for safety and energy efficiency.

Want to know more or ready to start planning your perfect garden space? Give us a shout! We’re here to help with quotes, brochures, showroom visits, or just to chat about your ideas.

Remember, while we’ve tried to simplify things here, it’s always a good idea to double-check with your local authority if you’re unsure. Every property is unique, after all!

Garden Rooms Planning Permission FAQs

Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any additional inquiries.