For some years Kieran Barnard and his family have had a small bike store in the front garden of their terraced house in Brighton. It’s the one you can see in the picture – compact and unobtrusive, partly hidden by a garden wall and a bush. It’s even painted a pleasant shade of blue.

It means Barnard, his wife Claudia and their two young sons don’t have to carry their sometimes muddy, greasy bikes through the home to keep them safely. This in turn means they ride the bikes more often.

Who could object to that? Oddly, the people who have just objected – and gave the family 28 days to remove the shed – are Barnard’s own council, Brighton and Hove. In fact, what has since 2011 been the country’s first Green-run local authority is currently in the process of targeting other front garden bike stores.

Anomalous as this certainly appears, the problem is a wider one. Under national regulations any “outbuilding” in front of a house (flats have different and more complex rules), even a compact bike shed, officially requires planning permission. This was news to Barnard, and indeed to me before he and other Brighton residents got in touch about the council’s crackdown.

And it’s worth stressing immediately that Brighton is by no means the only council that enforces such rules, even if their current efforts perhaps seem more vigorous than many.

So yes, this is a fairly long blog post about planning permission for sheds, but stick with us – it offers a fascinating microcosm of how deeply car-centrism percolates through British officialdom, even those in ostensibly bike-friendly places like Brighton.

The Brighton crackdown

The saga began last year when a neighbour of Barnard in the Withdean area of Brighton, Tom Atkins, put up a front garden shed – he described it as a “small wooden hut” – outside his terraced home to store the family’s bikes.

He soon received a letter from the council ordering him to remove it. Alerted to the need for planning permission Atkins spent £172 applying retrospectively. This first application was refused but he was encouraged by chats with planning officers to believe a few modifications might do the trick if he re-applied.

This wasn’t the case, and while the family were on holiday last year they got another letter, by recorded delivery, threatening a fine of £5,000.

As Atkins plots an appeal to the planning inspectorate the shed has been removed. He, his wife and their two young daughters currently keep their bikes in the back garden or inside the house.

The couple both cycle to work, but he wonders whether this will continue as the weather deteriorates:

This time of year it’s annoying but do-able, the bikes aren’t that dirty. But when it gets into winter it’ll become a lot more difficult if you have to carry a muddy bike through the house.

Front garden bike stores are by no means uncommon in Brighton, or indeed in many other places, so Atkins asked the council why they were taking such tough action against him while other households nearby were left alone. The upshot? Barnard was told to remove his shed, with same fate potentially facing around 20 other similar structures in surrounding streets.

Brighton council’s stance

Brighton council is adamant that it is just enforcing national regulations and there is nothing anomalous, let alone newsworthy, about a Green-run council doing this.

As part of an exchange of emails with a surprisingly hostile press office I was given this statement:

We can categorically state with 100% certainty that no politicians from any party have been involved in initiating any enforcement actions over sheds in front gardens.

All very clear, even if that wasn’t really my question. I was more seeking to know whether the councillors – none of whom have been available for comment but have, I’m told, expressed private worries at shed-mageddon – could urge officials to use more discretion. The response was categorical: the Town and Country Planning Act makes the rules and there is no real leeway. A second statement came:

We would expect some people to be disappointed that they cannot have a shed in their front garden but it’s unfair to characterise officials as unhelpful. This planning authority, like most in the country, is open about its view that sheds in front gardens ruin the street scene and we’re unlikely to help people do that.

It’s hard to say for sure whether Brighton is being tougher on this than most other councils – we’d be interested to hear your experiences. But what does seem clear is that planning officers do, in fact, have some discretion.

John Silvester from the Planning Officers Society, the trade body for the discipline, says this on the general subject:

Enforcement is always a matter of judgment with regard to existing structures; a local planning authority needs to consider whether it is expedient and in the public interest to take enforcement action.

Meanwhile the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), in charge of planning nationally, concurs with Brighton’s view that building sheds in front of houses is not normally allowed. But it adds:

Where permitted development rights do not exist a householder can still apply for planning permission. Planning guidance tells councils to be supportive of the need for bike storage – provided it is designed in a discreet way that does not harm visual amenity.

This, to me, sounds like sufficient flexibility to make it unlikely, had the council retrospectively approved or even ignored Withdean’s assorted bike sheds, that Eric Pickles would have been getting a train to Brighton armed with a sledgehammer to do the job himself.

I should reiterate that I’m not saying Green councillors ordered, or even explicitly approved, the crackdown. In my experience many local politicians are sufficiently inexperienced and time-pressed that they have little idea about how many policies are enforced. But they are able, now, to urge restraint, if they choose.

The two locals I spoke to are certainly annoyed. Atkins said this:

The judgment in our own planning application wasn’t really to do with national legislation, it seemed a personal judgment by the planning officer saying, ‘We think the impact on the street scene outweighs the sustainable transport implications’ … I’m a Guardian reader, I’m pretty well disposed towards the Greens. But this, to me, isn’t a question of political ideology, it’s about competence. If they had any control over the council they were running they would be able to do something about this issue. As it stands they’re washing their hands of it.

Barnard told me:

We feel that the approach the planning office is taking is undermining the Green council’s own sustainable transport strategy. Brighton has made huge strides in recent years towards encouraging green transportation and it is a great shame that the council planners have adopted this approach.



The national picture

The DCLG’s argument for requiring planning permission for cycle stores in front of houses is because they have “an impact on the amenity of the area as a whole, not just the property concerned”. Brighton council’s statement was more explicit: “Sheds in front gardens ruin the street scene.”

I suppose it depends on how you view a street scene. A small shed is, for me, considerably less intrusive than a parked car. And yet the residential streets of Withdean are full of cars. But that’s seen as normal. Bike stores are not.

More anomalous still is the fact that if you have a sufficiently big front garden and don’t live in a conservation area you can, in most circumstances, turn that garden into a driveway to leave your car, without the need for without planning permission. There are conditions on using water-permeable materials to avoid cumulative flood risks, but it’s fairly straightforward.

[A brief note: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all have distinct planning rules but they share the same regulations on front garden sheds and driveways.]



I don’t know about you, but when if comes to local impact I’d say a driveway containing a Humvee (or even something smaller) might be slightly more significant than a discreet bike shed.

This is typical of the British passive neglect of cycling which keeps bike use at such tiny levels. Anyone who commutes on two wheels realises how important it is to have somewhere secure and convenient to store your bike, ideally not inside the home. But officials seem to lack the imagination to do anything which might make it easier.

It is, theoretically, possible for councils to unilaterally extend permitted development (work which does not need planning permission) to take in bike sheds, though such actions are rare. Brighton says it will not do this:

No, because it’s not possible to distinguish between bike sheds and any other shed. The only way to do so would be with a bizarre and expensive regime involving council officials going round inspecting the contents of people’s sheds to ensure they were only used for bikes.

As I say: a lack of imagination. I’m certain that a council with a sufficiently ingrained commitment to cycling could find a way round this. To reiterate, the fact Brighton and Hove is Green-run is largely a curiosity. This is officialdom speaking, not politics.

And so, in the meantime we can only hope that the city’s councillors tell their planning officials to be a bit more flexible.



• This article was amended on 5 August 2014. An earlier version said more than 20 local householders had been told to remove their bike sheds. Although more than 20 bike sheds in the area are potentially in breach of planning laws, officers have written to only three households.