Campsite and glamping flood risk and drainage: the planning requirements in England

A campsite flood risk assessment is required for any camping, glamping or holiday caravan proposal in Flood Zone 2 or 3, and for sites in Flood Zone 1 that are a hectare or more, sit in a critical drainage area, or that the strategic flood risk assessment or the Flood Map for Planning shows to be at risk from any source, surface water included. Most rural campsites clear at least one of those thresholds on area alone.

What catches people is everything after that. Camping and caravan sites sit on a very short list of uses the NPPF deliberately strips of the change-of-use shortcut past the sequential test. The warning and evacuation plan most operators treat as an afterthought turns out to be the condition the whole vulnerability classification hangs on. And drainage, which is assessed on its own terms and can sink a scheme by itself, barely gets discussed at all: we read sixteen of the pages currently ranking for camping and glamping planning advice, and the one sitting top of Google for "glamping planning permission" does not contain the word "flood".

This article sets out what the flood risk and drainage requirements actually are for holiday and tourism sites in England, for permanent parks and 60-day pop-ups alike, updated for the August 2026 rewrite of the National Planning Policy Framework. It does not cover Gypsy and Traveller sites, which are classified and assessed differently.

Defra's 2012 review of flood safety at caravan and camping sites found that around 28 per cent of sites in England and Wales were then at flood risk from rivers and the sea, and that Environment Agency staff knew of work having started on an evacuation plan at just five per cent of them.

Does a campsite need a flood risk assessment?

Yes, in almost every case worth applying for. Policy F4 of the August 2026 NPPF requires a site-specific flood risk assessment for all development in Flood Zones 2, 3a and 3b, and for Flood Zone 1 proposals that meet any one of three further triggers. Because campsites are land-hungry, the one-hectare trigger catches most of them even when the mapped flood risk is nil.

The triggers, in full:

• Flood Zone 2, 3a or 3b. An FRA is required for all development, with no size threshold and no minor-development let-off.
• Sites of one hectare or more in Flood Zone 1. A 30-pitch touring field will usually exceed this on area alone.
• Critical drainage areas. Land the Environment Agency has notified as having critical drainage problems.
• At risk from any source, now or in future. Land the strategic flood risk assessment or the Flood Map for Planning shows at risk from any source, including surface water. The August 2026 Framework dropped the old qualifier that this only bit where development introduced a more vulnerable use, so a mapped surface water flow path across the field now triggers an FRA in its own right.

That list has two wrinkles. The first is that Flood Zones cover rivers and the sea only. Present-day surface water extents joined the Flood Map for Planning on 25 March 2025, and on 28 May 2026 the Environment Agency added climate change extents and banded depths for both scenarios. A field that has always screened as Flood Zone 1 may still show mapped surface water risk, now with depths, and Policy F4 now pulls exactly that land into FRA scope. The second is that camping and caravan sites are expressly carved out of the Environment Agency's standing advice. For a more vulnerable use in Flood Zone 2, standing advice normally applies, "except for landfills, waste facility sites, caravan or camping sites where the Environment Agency should be consulted". Your application will be consulted on directly.

The Environment Agency must be consulted on a campsite or caravan proposal in Flood Zone 2 or 3. Standing advice does not apply to this use type.

Is camping "more vulnerable" or "highly vulnerable" development?

It depends entirely on whether people are holidaying or living there, and the NPPF says so in two lines of Annex F, Table 2 that sit in different categories of the flood risk vulnerability classification.

Read the second line again. The more favourable classification is granted "subject to a specific warning and evacuation plan". The plan is the qualifying condition, not a mitigation measure added at the end. Without it there is a real argument that the use does not sit in the more vulnerable class at all, and the difference between the two classes is the difference between a scheme that can be consented in Flood Zone 3a and one that cannot be consented there at any price.

The August 2026 Framework does one thing here that the old one did not: it brings the vulnerability-and-flood-zone compatibility matrix inside national policy, at Annex F, Table 3, with express "development should be refused" outcomes. What used to live in guidance is now decision-making policy, so the acceptability grid below is no longer advisory.

A mixed scheme takes its highest vulnerability category unless it is assessed in component parts. Flood Zone 3b, the functional floodplain, is not drawn on the Flood Map for Planning; it comes from the local strategic flood risk assessment.

That is also why occupancy conditions do so much work on these applications. A holiday-use-only condition, or a seasonal-closure condition, is what keeps a site on the more vulnerable side of the line. It also does something the planning file rarely mentions. Under section 5A(5) of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, a permission "expressed to be granted for holiday use only", or one with a closed season, takes the site out of "relevant protected site" status and out of the Mobile Homes Act 2013 licensing regime altogether.

A more vulnerable use requires the exception test in Flood Zone 3a and should be refused in Flood Zone 3b. A highly vulnerable use should be refused in either.

Note also that Flood Zone 3b is not drawn on the Flood Map for Planning. It is identified in the local planning authority's strategic flood risk assessment, and where the SFRA holds nothing useful for your site the FRA has to establish it. For most rural sites that means working from the present-day 3.3 per cent annual probability extent.

Our flood risk vulnerability classification guide works through the classification in full, including the rule that a mixed scheme takes its highest vulnerability category unless it is assessed in component parts.

The sequential test you cannot skip

Changes of use are ordinarily exempt from the sequential and exception tests. Camping and caravan sites are not. The carve-out is not new: it stood in footnote 62 of the December 2024 Framework, and the August 2026 rewrite lifts it, word for word in substance, into national policy at F5(2)(c), which exempts:

Camping and caravan changes of use are the exception written into the exemption, so for them the sequential test, and where the flood zone demands it the exception test, still apply. This is a specific, deliberate carve-out, and Inspectors apply it. In appeal APP/M9496/W/23/3321415, decided in March 2024, a seasonal campsite in the Peak District was refused despite the Environment Agency withdrawing its objection once the FRA was submitted. The Inspector accepted the mitigation and dismissed the appeal anyway: "Nevertheless, this does not negate the need for the sequential test and so the conflict I have identified is not overcome." A campsite flood risk assessment, however good, does not substitute for a test you never applied.

What the test means in practice shifted in the applicant's favour in September 2025, when the Planning Practice Guidance was updated, and the August 2026 Framework has since hard-wired several of those points into policy:

• The area of search is proportionate. PPG paragraph 27a confirms the catchment area "should always be appropriate to the nature and scale of the proposal and the settlement it is proposed for", and Policy F5 now caps it in national policy: the area of search "should not be greater than the anticipated catchment of the development in terms of its likely occupiers or users".
• Alternative sites need not be yours. PPG paragraph 028 states plainly that alternative sites "do not need to be owned by the applicant to be considered 'reasonably available'".
• Surface water counts. The sequential approach expressly considers "all sources of flooding including areas at risk of surface water flooding".
• A surface-water-only exemption now sits in the Framework. Policy F5(2)(b)(ii) removes the sequential test where a site is at risk of surface water only and the FRA "demonstrates clearly" that layout, design and mitigation will keep occupiers and users safe for the development's lifetime without increasing flood risk elsewhere. The FRA becomes the gatekeeper, and the exemption does not extend to river or sea flooding, which is where most riverside campsites actually sit.

The extension argument is the one worth understanding. In appeal APP/E2001/W/24/3353674 a glamping pod in Flood Zone 3 was allowed because the Inspector treated the proposal as farm diversification rather than a standalone tourism venture, which "justifies limiting the search area for the Sequential Test to the farm itself". The pod passed the exception test on rural-economy grounds (then NPPF paragraph 88, support the Framework carries forward), and the Inspector was explicit that this was "predicated on the glamping pod being used as holiday accommodation rather than a principal residence and a flood emergency plan being in place". That Inspector was applying East Riding's own sequential test guidance, and the pod replaced an existing static caravan, so the decision is a demonstration rather than a template. Extending an existing site really is easier than starting a new one, though the reason is the shrinking search area rather than any exemption. Note too that under the August 2026 Framework the exception test (Policy F6) now runs to three limbs, adding a requirement not to increase flood risk elsewhere (and to reduce it where possible) to the older tests of wider benefit and lifetime safety, and it applies only to river and sea flooding.

Our explainers on the sequential and exception tests and the September 2025 PPG update cover the mechanics.

The 60-day pop-up route: prior approval, not notification

Since 26 July 2023 a landowner has been able to run a temporary recreational campsite under Class BC of Part 4, Schedule 2 of the GPDO: 60 days a year, up to 50 pitches, no planning application. Two things about it are widely misreported.

The first is seasonality. The wording is "not more than 60 days in total in any calendar year". There is no summer window, no March-to-September restriction and no date limitation anywhere in Class BC. The days can be taken whenever the operator chooses, and they need not be consecutive.

The second matters more. In Flood Zone 2 or 3 this is not a notification route. Condition BC.2(d) makes the development "subject to prior approval by the local planning authority before commencement of development in each calendar year", and BC.3(2)(a) requires the application to be accompanied by "a site-specific flood risk assessment, including provision for warning and evacuation". The authority must consult the Environment Agency for at least 21 days, and development cannot begin until approval is given or 56 days have passed. Every year.

Class BC also excludes caravans generally, not just touring caravans. The only exception is "a caravan which is used as a motor vehicle designed or adapted for human habitation", so motorhomes and campervans qualify and shepherd's huts, statics and touring vans do not. Tents, yurts and other moveable structures that are not caravans are fine. And the right is not disapplied in National Parks, National Landscapes or conservation areas, though authorities can and do remove it: the New Forest National Park Authority made an Article 4 direction covering the whole park, in force from 27 October 2023.

It is fair to ask whether any of this is proportionate. Sixty days, fifty pitches, tents that leave no trace: the scheme is about as light-touch as development gets, and the paperwork can look absurd next to it. But the thing being assessed is not the tents. It is fifty groups of people, most of whom have never seen the site before, asleep at ground level on land the operator has chosen precisely because it is flat and next to water. That is why the drafters wrote warning and evacuation into the statute rather than leaving it to policy, and it is why the flood risk assessment is the one document Class BC names.

Prior approval takes up to 56 days and must be obtained again every calendar year. Add the Environment Agency's 20-working-day turnaround for detailed flood data and a pop-up needs roughly four months of lead time.

What a campsite flood warning and evacuation plan has to do

The Planning Practice Guidance singles this use type out: "Emergency plans will be essential for sites at risk of flooding used for holiday or short-let caravans and camping and for any site with transient occupancy." The reasoning is set out in the Environment Agency-endorsed ADEPT guidance. Transient occupants "may not be aware of the risks or the warning systems, and may not have the local knowledge to respond safely". The August 2026 Framework sharpens the point: Policy F7 is now written as a refusal — development "should be refused unless" it is made safe — and for the first time names "visitors" alongside occupiers and users, which is precisely who a campsite fills its pitches with.

A plan that will survive scrutiny has to work through the following:

• Establish the trigger. Environment Agency flood warnings where the service covers the site; where it does not, a locally observed river level with a marked gauge, agreed in advance and written into the plan.
• Set the lead time against the catchment. A flashy upland catchment gives a different warning window from a slow lowland river, and the plan has to be honest about which one it is.
• Name who acts and who is on site overnight. Staffing at 3am in October is the question an emergency planner will ask first.
• Identify the assembly point and the refuge. Both sit above the design flood level plus climate change allowance.
• Deal with the units. Touring caravans and tents can be moved off site if there is warning; statics cannot, and the plan has to say what happens to their occupants instead.
• Test it and share it. The Environment Agency asks operators to "share your flood plan and site map with emergency planners at your local council".

Applicants lean on the plan considerably harder than the guidance lets them. The PPG says "it will not be appropriate to rely solely on emergency plans to mitigate residual risk". And the ADEPT guidance is equally direct that deferring the plan by condition rarely works: "It will very rarely be appropriate to use a planning condition to defer the provision of an EP to a later date, because it may show that the development cannot be made safe."

The Environment Agency reviews the flood data behind the plan but does not sign the plan off. It "can advise on key flood risks and whether there are any significant omissions, but are not able to comment on the overall adequacy of an EP". That judgement falls to the local planning authority, working with council emergency planners.

The plan is what earns a camping site its more vulnerable classification. Treating it as paperwork to be conditioned later puts the classification, and therefore the permission, at risk.

Safe access and egress when there is no upstairs

Most flood risk mitigation for buildings assumes a first floor. A tent has no first floor, a touring caravan has no first floor, and a static caravan will float in about two feet of water. The standard mitigation package is unavailable, so access and egress carry the whole argument.

The Environment Agency requires plans to show a safe route "set above estimated flood levels and connect[ing] the site to an area away from current or future flood risk", and that single-storey accommodation "can access a safe refuge above the estimated flood level". The numerical thresholds sit in the ADEPT guidance:

For most campsites this reduces to one question: is there a way out that stays below 0.75 for long enough to use it? Rural sites usually have a single track to a lane, and that track is often the lowest ground on the holding. Where it is, the assessment has nowhere left to go, because a plan that ends with fifty cars queuing on a flooding farm track is not an evacuation. A campsite flood risk assessment stands or falls on the access route. Where that route cannot be kept dry, the PPG allows limited depths "provided that the proposed access is designed with appropriate signage etc. to make it safe". It also warns that "even low levels of flooding can pose a risk to people in situ". For design, use the central climate change allowance: the Environment Agency directs that when "designing safe access, escape routes and places of refuge, use the central allowance for all development types except for essential infrastructure".

Our article on residual flood risk sets out how the hazard rating is calculated, and the climate change allowances guide covers which percentile and epoch apply.

Surface water drainage: the runoff nobody models

Campsite applications routinely arrive with a flood risk assessment and nothing on drainage. That is a validation risk and, increasingly, a refusal risk. Policy F8 of the August 2026 NPPF applies to "development proposals which could affect drainage on or around the development site". That sentence carries no major-development threshold and no pitch-count qualifier, and the rewrite went further than the old paragraph 182 it replaced. The design and maintenance requirements now bind every sustainable drainage scheme, where the old rules reached only SuDS on major development, and Annex C makes a statement showing how the national standards have been met a national information requirement. Drainage is now a validation-stage document, not something to condition later.

The specific problem with campsites is that the runoff is real but invisible in the calculations:

• Grass pitches are not zero. The 2025 National Standards, now the mandatory design benchmark under F8(2)(a), require the whole contributing area to be modelled, "including both permeable and impermeable surfaces", and are explicit that "contributing pervious surfaces, including footprints of any SuDS features, should not be ignored".
• Compaction changes the ground. The Environment Agency's 2019 state of the environment soil report notes that "when soils become compacted, they are more likely to become waterlogged and experience surface ponding that leads to run-off and flooding", and that the risk of compaction itself is highest on clay soils during wet periods. No campsite-specific research exists, so this is a design judgement rather than a published coefficient.
• Hardstanding is development in itself. Laying pitch bases, access tracks or a parking court is an engineering operation under section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, whether or not pitch numbers change.
• Permeable paving suits campsite traffic, up to a point. CIRIA C753 gives car parks and lightly trafficked surfaces as its typical application, but flags "frequent vehicle braking and turning actions" as the concern wherever a pavement takes heavier or faster traffic, so service yards and turning heads need bespoke design. On clay, a permeable pavement works only as a lined, tanked attenuation system with a positive outlet.
• The discharge hierarchy still applies. Reuse, then infiltration, then a surface water body, then a surface water sewer, then a combined sewer, "to the maximum extent practicable" — the discharge hierarchy in full.

Whether the lead local flood authority is formally consulted turns on area, not pitches. Under the Development Management Procedure Order 2015, "major development" for a campsite is caught by the one-hectare limb, or by new buildings of 1,000 square metres or more, because a pitch is not a dwellinghouse and the ten-dwelling test simply does not apply, so a 200-pitch touring site is not major development on pitch count. Many campsites do exceed a hectare and so are consulted on anyway, but a 25-pitch site on 0.8 hectares will not be, and still has to meet Policy F8. That gap is worth naming, because it is where campsite drainage quietly goes wrong. No statutory consultee sees the scheme, nobody asks for calculations, the strategy never gets written, and the first time anyone looks properly is when a neighbour complains about water off the new hardstanding.

One further change bites on rural holdings crossed by a ditch or stream. Policy F8(3), which has no equivalent in the old Framework, resists any new enclosure of a watercourse without compelling reasons and, where possible, expects existing culverts to be removed and channels renaturalised. A plan to pipe a watercourse to free up pitch space now runs against national policy, and the LLFA and Environment Agency have a clear hook to say so.

Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 remains uncommenced in England. In January 2026 Defra confirmed that better delivery "may be achieved by continuing to improve the current planning policy-based approach ... rather than commencing Schedule 3". With F8 now giving the national SuDS standards direct policy force, the planning system has become their enforcement route in all but name, which is why a campsite drainage strategy that ignores them will not survive validation.

See our guides to the SuDS hierarchy, infiltration testing and what drainage information a planning application needs for the detail behind each of these.

Foul drainage, the general binding rules and the chemical toilet trap

Most rural campsites are off-mains, and this is where applications quietly fall apart. The general binding rules allow a small sewage discharge without a permit up to two cubic metres a day to ground, or five cubic metres a day to surface water. Above that the operator must connect to a public foul sewer where it is reasonable to do so, and apply for a permit where it is not.

Do the arithmetic and those limits arrive far sooner than anyone expects. Two cubic metres is 2,000 litres a day. At the Flows and Loads figure of 100 litres per person per day for an unserviced touring caravan, that is twenty people; on the 75-litre tent figure, twenty-seven. Assume two people to a pitch, which is our assumption rather than a published one because no published figure exists, and a ten-pitch touring field has reached the limit for a discharge to ground before anyone has built a shower block. The five-cubic-metre surface water limit gets you to roughly twenty-five touring pitches on the same assumption.

Sizing is not guesswork. Both general binding rules pages direct commercial and holiday accommodation to British Water's Flows and Loads guidance, and standard rules permit SR2025 No 5 makes it a permit condition that volume is "calculated by the method specified in the current edition of 'Flows and Loads'".

Three things about that table matter. It is expressed per person per day, not per pitch, and there is no published figure for how many people occupy a touring pitch, a tent pitch or a glamping unit, so anyone quoting one is exercising judgement rather than citing a standard. Glamping does not appear at all; the guidance predates the sector. And the design case is the August bank holiday, not the trading average: "a system suggested for a hotel or caravan site or any other application, with an average 80% occupancy rate should be designed to handle 100% occupancy".

Then there is the trap almost nobody catches. Chemical toilet waste is not domestic sewage. The Environment Agency lists "chemical toilets – at residential or commercial sites" among effluents that are not domestic sewage, alongside "campsite launderettes open to non-residents". Since general binding rule 3 requires that "the sewage must only be domestic", and SR2025 No 5 requires that it "contain no trade effluent", routing a chemical disposal point into the septic tank or package plant can put the whole site outside its permitting basis. British Water reaches the same conclusion from the engineering side: loading figures "assume that wastes from chemical toilets do not enter the system as they must not be allowed to enter into the treatment plant", and it allows a separate cesspool to take it instead.

Seasonality is the other operational reality. A package treatment plant is a biological process. As the Northern Ireland environment regulator puts it, these processes "can't be simply switched on and off", and the Environment Agency has issued its own advice to camping and caravan sites in England on restarting plants after a shutdown. A plant that sits empty from October and fills at Easter will not treat properly for some weeks. Operators who run on a start-stop basis are expected to have procedures for bringing flows back up.

A standard rules permit for a discharge just outside the general binding rules is determined in 20 working days. A bespoke permit takes around four months.

Our general binding rules guide and BS 6297 percolation testing article cover the off-mains route in full.

What to submit, and when

The programme, not the policy, is what usually causes the damage. A campsite flood risk assessment depends on data and testing that both run to fixed calendars, so work backwards from the opening date:

1. Screen the site. One day. Flood zones, surface water layers, critical drainage areas and the SFRA. This is where you find out which route you are on.
2. Order detailed Environment Agency flood data. Twenty working days. This is the modelled flood levels, depths and hazard for your site, and it is what turns a map screenshot into an assessment. Nothing meaningful can be written until it arrives.
3. Carry out ground testing, in winter. Approved Document H governs percolation testing for a foul drainage field and requires the characteristics to be "suitable in both summer and winter conditions", forbidding testing during drought. Soakaway infiltration testing for surface water runs to BRE Digest 365, and the 2025 National Standards require infiltration features to sit at least a metre above the maximum likely groundwater level. Summer testing on a summer-trading business is the classic campsite error and it costs a season.
4. Prepare the FRA, the flood warning and evacuation plan and the drainage strategy. Three to five weeks.
5. Submit, by prior approval or full application. Class BC prior approval runs up to 56 days with a 21-day Environment Agency consultation; a full application follows the usual 8 or 13 weeks.
6. Apply for any environmental permit in parallel. Twenty working days for a standard rules permit, around four months for a bespoke one.

For a pop-up opening at Easter, step 2 alone means starting before Christmas. For a permanent site needing winter groundwater data, the honest answer is a year.

If you are unsure which documents your scheme needs, our article on whether you need both an FRA and a drainage strategy sets out the decision grid, and the invalidated application guide lists the documents most often missing at validation.

Frequently asked questions

Getting it right first time

For a campsite, flood risk and drainage are matters of principle. They decide whether the site is consentable at all, which is why they cannot be left to a condition and sorted out later. The August 2026 Framework has hardened that further: the sequential-test carve-out, the safety tests and the compatibility outcomes are now written as national refusal policy rather than the permissive "should only be allowed where" language they replaced. For any application made on or after 1 April 2026 the appeals system has also largely closed the door on introducing new technical evidence after refusal, and once the national scheme of delegation moves most decisions to officers from 31 October 2026 an unresolved Environment Agency or lead local flood authority objection becomes close to determinative. A thin submission is now a thin appeal.

Unda prepares the campsite flood risk assessment, the flood warning and evacuation plan, the sequential and exception test report, the surface water drainage strategy and the foul drainage strategy as one package, for campsites, glamping sites and holiday parks across England. The starting point is usually a flood risk assessment for planning, and our guide to the NPPF's flood risk and drainage provisions covers the new Chapter 18 in full. If you are still working out whether a field will carry a scheme at all, our free flood risk map and soakaway ground conditions checker will tell you in ten minutes what a lost season would otherwise tell you the hard way.