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Q&As
Tiny House / Earthship
How, what, where. Help! We are looking for a piece of land (3 hec +) to firstly place a tiny house on. A source of water to use and harness energy from, in addition to solar and wind. Land enough to grow food on and have self sustained cabins on to rent out in the future.
Once we are ready to build, we are looking at an Earthship/underground house to build. What is our standing on building off grid eco homes? We are hoping to find something that is not going to cost us the earth! Can we find something that we can get planning permission for from agricultural land? Can we put a tiny house on it? I am struggling to find/understand where we can do this.
One Answer
When you’re building in the countryside, the planning system only allows new houses in limited circumstances (set out at paragraph 55 of National Planning Policy Guidance). These include houses needed to serve a rural business and projects showcasing exemplary and innovative architecture.
A fledgling business might be sufficient to justify a temporary dwelling, such as a ‘tiny house’ , but where councils have adopted the national minimum space standards into their policies there can be problems when ‘tiny’ is judged too small.
An off-grid eco home has the potential to meet the requirements of innovation and sustainability set out at paragraph 55, but these sorts of permissions are only rarely granted. A site that is degraded in some way is always going to be easier for this type of project compared with a greenfield site. A site with some form of accommodation already on it – a mobile home for example – is also going to be significantly easier.
The obvious fit with your requirements though is to consider basing yourself in Wales where so called ‘One Planet’ developments – ultra- low impact building and lifestyle development – pioneered by the Lammas project, are supported by planning policy, set out in the Welsh Assembly’s ‘One Planet Development’ policy document (TAN6, July 2010).