At Pitchup.com, we have a history of supporting the rural businesses that make the UK’s outdoor tourism sector thrive and underpin the survival of rural communities.

In recent years, the Welsh government has announced, and held consultations on, proposed changes to Permitted Development Rights (PDR) - rights that temporary or ‘pop-up’ campsites use to accommodate tourists without the need for planning permission. 

In Wales, currently tent campsites can operate for 28 days per calendar year under permitted development rights, other than a building or land within the curtilage of a building. Tent campsites could operate for 56 days between April 2021 and January 2022, through a temporary extension aimed at boosting domestic tourism during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Under the new proposals, the Welsh government proposes a new class permitting temporary recreational campsites to operate for up to 60 days in a calendar year in Wales without the need for planning permission.

Pitchup is working with industry stakeholders to lobby the Welsh government for the most appropriate application of the proposed changes, to allow rural businesses to continue to operate temporary campsites and futureproof their incomes. 

Changes proposed under the new rights include: 

• Unlimited tents/motorhomes/campervans for 60 days, but sites within national parks and National Landscapes (formerly AONBs) will stay on 28 days

• Sites within 100m of a building not owned by the landowner/operator, Special Areas of Conservation, Special Protection Areas and Ramsar Sites will have their existing 28-day right removed

At the time of writing, no implementation date has been given for the first phase.

Summary of Pitchup’s response to the 2025 PDR consultation

Pitchup is supportive of the extension of the rights to 60 days, bringing the rules in line with England, however we are concerned about the proposed restrictions, which threaten both the diversification opportunities for some landowners and the overall economic benefits that tourists bring to rural communities.

Demand for camping in Wales has continued to rise since the Covid-19 pandemic. Since 2019, camping bookings for Wales have risen by 258% on Pitchup.com, with annual growth of 21% in 2025 alone. This underlines the robust demand for outdoor holidays in Wales and points to a need to reverse a decline in temporary campsites in the country.

Demand for camping is also underpinned by long-term trends in sustainable living, which are critical to encourage if we are to meet legally binding net-zero targets and promote the general health and wellness of the population.

Given the proven success of ‘pop-up’ campsites in supporting the UK’s domestic tourism sector and rural businesses, we believe the Welsh Government should support campsites by granting the additional days. This small change will deliver affordable tourist accommodation, thereby providing millions of pounds of much-needed investment into rural communities.

Out of all the countries that make up the United Kingdom, figures suggest Wales would benefit the most from extending Permitted Development Rights. This is because 34% of holidays in Wales involve camping or caravanning, compared to just 20% in England and 21% in Scotland, according to VisitBritain.

A 60-day right would also allow operators to offset the significant cost of moveable facilities. The 28-day permitted development right is unviable for many landowners: the significant cost of providing services such as mobile toilet and shower blocks and water supplies is difficult to recoup if sites can only operate for 28 days a year, taking into account low mid-week occupancy, bad weather and time used up erecting and dismantling facilities. It is prohibitively expensive to remove facilities temporarily.

The economic impact of pop-up campsites

In 2021, temporary campsites listed on Pitchup.com across the UK generated £25m for the British rural economy (estimates based on Pitching the Value figures, p.23). This is broken down as:

• £9.8m in pitch fees
• £2.9m in extras like firewood and fresh produce
• £12.3m in off-site spend (for example, in local pubs, restaurants and newsagents)

At 28 days, Wales' limit for permitted development camping is currently under half the limit of England’s 60 days. In 2024, the contribution in Wales was around half the level of 2021, likely as a result of the 56-day PDR limit reverting to 28 days. In comparison England, temporary campsites earned 62% more than those in Wales in 2024, due to the extended season they enjoy. 

The proposals will enable Wales to reverse its loss of market share of pop-up bookings, which fell from 14.3% to 10.9% between 2021 and 2024. With a greater proportion of holidays taking place in Wales, clearly the benefit to local high streets and employment would also be commensurately higher.

In a difficult economic climate, where three-quarters of farms with pop-up sites have already lost income due to changes in agricultural subsidies, Permitted Development Rights can help future-proof businesses as they face rising fuel costs and labour shortages.

By providing more options to stay outdoors, temporary campsites relieve the pressure on residential housing stock created by Airbnb and cottage-booking agencies.

In many rural areas, more than half of properties now have no permanent occupant. It is well documented that rents are escalating as supply reduces, displacing people from the communities where they grew up and depriving tourist areas of accommodation for seasonal staff. This is leading to 'zombie villages' whose school, health centre and other services cease to be viable as year-round populations fall below critical mass.

The positive impact on site owners

Carwyn and Leanne Miles, owners of Eco Caerhys Camping in Pembrokeshire, told us about the impact the temporary 56-day PDR extension had on their business.

Eco Caerhys Camping site is located on their family organic beef farm, which has existed since 1948. When they learned of the 56-day rule, Carywn and Leanne invested around £1,300 in creating their site.

• As a result of the 56-day rule, the site was able to remain open from 9 July through to 3 September. Eco Caerhys Camping “made around £43,000 in those 56 days and after paying all of the bills (logs, campfires, toilet hire, drain digger, cleaning products)… profited a fantastic £36,000”.
• Carywn and Leanne added that, as farmers, this extension “has made a massive difference”, explaining that the revenue provided by the pop-up campsite made them “financially able to keep the farm going that bit longer and support our family better".
• Explaining why the pop-up sites are an excellent way to diversify income, they said: “If we were to invest into the cattle, we would have to restructure the whole business and become a herd of about 75-100 head of cattle. We would have to build more sheds to sleep all of the cattle, and this would cost around £220,000 - £270,000 and would still not make as much money as the campsite did in those 56 days. It would also put our family into a huge, constant, never-ending debt which would be impossible to ever pay back.”  
• Carwyn and Leanne Miles concluded that the ease with which they generated the campsite income was a game changer for their farm. They concluded: “To change from the 28-day rule to the 56-day rule permanently would dramatically change our income, our livelihood and our future, and make less impact on our beautiful organic fields.”  

Sadly, with the rights reverting to 28 days, the campsite became unviable and last June Carwyn and Leanne were forced to make the difficult decision to close the site and sell the land.

Susan Allen, who runs the Moss Lane Cottage campsite just a mile from the English border, said the disparity in regulations threatened the survival of the pop-up camping sector in Wales – an assertion supported by Pitchup.com’s figures.

She said: “It is very frustrating that the Welsh Government doesn’t seem to want to follow suit and extend PDR as in England, as campsites there get five or six more weekends than we do. I’m not saying that if we got 56 or 60 days we would use them all, but to be able to open more weekends across the summer would make a big difference to us financially.”

Freda Shaw, who runs a highly-rated pop-up campsite, The Boat House, on land alongside the River Severn, right on the Welsh border near Welshpool, said: “There’s a pop-up campsite a couple of miles away that is just over the border and they can open for 60 days. Campsites like mine are bringing much-needed money into rural communities. Why are the Welsh Government objecting to this when everybody wants it to be extended to 60 days?”

Why the planning route is not possible

Permitted development rights are often the route by which farmers and landowners ‘test the market’ on diversification projects. Once they’re successful, they can then apply for full planning permission. But applications for agritourism projects have faced lengthy delays: minor planning applications in Wales take an average of 106 days to decide despite an annual reduction in minor applications of 9%, according to the latest ‘Development management quarterly survey’.

A 2024 Country Land & Business Association member survey found that 73% of respondents had been forced to abandon plans to invest because of planning problems. Of those, nearly half had wasted at least £10,000 on projects before giving up, with many (19%) reporting losses of more than £50,000. Extending the number of days under the PDR for all temporary uses of land would allow businesses to prove the concept of their diversification before wasting expenditure on a planning application.

Benefits to customers

Camping provides an affordable cost-effective break close to nature, which boosts physical and mental health. It is the most sustainable form of tourism accommodation, with a vastly lower environmental impact than alternatives. Temporary campsites in particular have also allowed holidaymakers to learn about farming and rural life.

Temporary sites have drawn new customers to the camping sector following record sales of tents and camping paraphernalia whose new owners have expanded the overall camping market. With 59% of the population not having taken a camping/caravan trip in the last three years according to Mintel, they have broadened the appeal of camping to new socio-demographic groups and those not allowed at many traditional campsites (e.g. groups of young people).

The extended rights should also have a positive impact on diversity and inclusion. Natural England has estimated that BAME visitors account for only 1% of visitors to national parks despite making up 14% of the population. Low-income groups are similarly underrepresented. Temporary campsites – by offering cheaper accommodation with more space, having fewer regular customers and without a lot of the strict rules of some of the larger established sites – are well suited to those who haven’t camped or visited the countryside before.

The ‘100m rule’ will impact rural pubs

The proposal is not simply to extend existing successful permitted development rights, but to impose restrictions on rights that have worked perfectly well for decades.

The proposed limitation on the temporary use of land for camping within 100 metres of the curtilage of a “protected building” (the '100-metre rule’) does not exist under English permitted development rights, putting Welsh landowners at a significant disadvantage. Not only will it remove the ability to access the new 60-day rights, but it will also remove existing 70-year-old 28-day permitted development rights altogether within 100m of a protected building’ Almost all pub campsites will fall within this arbitrary threshold, threatening to wipe out pub temporary campsites across the country.

We are concerned that an impact assessment has not been carried out on the removal of these rights, and we believe it will have a significant impact on pubs, which are in a particularly vulnerable economic position at the moment. 

In the UK, pubs are closing at a rate of 50 per month as they are hit by rises in minimum wage, national insurance and business rates alongside loss of tax relief. Not only are pitch fees a lifeline for struggling pubs, but also campers also eat and drink in the establishment, boosting sales. Morris Fenton, owner of the Red Lion in Brinkley, said: “We've found 50%+ of campers are spending £100 in our bar/restaurant these past several weeks – and for a small country pub that's significant”.

Removing existing rights will also impact other rural high-street businesses, making it harder for them to diversify into tourism, in direct contradiction to the Welsh government policy to diversify town centres and increase footfall.

Over the last 3 years, Pitchup.com has received fewer than a handful of complaints relating to pop-up sites out of a total of 217,000 pop-up bookings in the UK and therefore we argue no additional statutory regulations are needed.

New restrictions on the types of land that can be used

The current 28-day permitted development rights do not restrict camping in Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Scheduled Monuments, safety hazard areas or military explosives storage areas.  

Other than the curtilage of a listed building, those exclusions do not apply to the relevant existing permitted development rights, which are Part 4 Class B and (for the pandemic period) Part 4A Class A.

In SSSIs, consent from Natural Resources Wales is already required if camping is listed on the OLDSI (Operations Likely to Damage the Special Interest) lists. Breaches of the current rules are punishable by prosecution and/or enforcement of permitted development rules.

As such designations already constrain potential uses, it is important that options remain for landowners to diversify. Camping income can make a valuable contribution towards maintaining and conserving land and buildings subject to designations, enabling visitors to appreciate the reason they were made in the first place.

Similarly, national policy does not impose any special requirements on permanent campsites in flood zone 2. Temporary campsites will tend to be used in spring or summer when the prospects of flooding are less. Camping has been taking place under these temporary rights for many decades, yet the consultation produces no evidence that this requirement is needed. 

Time is of the essence

In September 2024, the Welsh government stated that “the start of the summer camping season 2025 will be the earliest any possible changes can be put in place”. As of writing, in March 2026, unless legislation is enacted soon, another summer of peak trading will pass by and the Welsh economy will lose out again.

We encourage the Welsh government to move quickly to make this change, to allow pop-up campsites the opportunity to make the most of the busy spring and summer season.

For more information on permitted development rights, view our guide on How to Start a Campsite.