Could Reforesting Help With Planning Permission for Tiny Houses?
Would it be fair to say that those who seek a tiny house lifestyle equally are fond of the environment? To us, we feel that one of the major points of going tiny is to reduce our carbon footprint and to live a greener lifestyle, but usually, the one thing that stops someone from living the dream is planning permission.
As you are all aware, gaining planning permission for a tiny home can be difficult in the UK. Although it is classified as a caravan, caravan parks don't seem to want to rent spaces for them while purchasing land for a tiny will require you to find a reason to live on the land in many cases. These reasons can be for farming, security (say for a tourist site) and reforesting.
What is Reforesting?
Friends of The Earth wishes to double tree cover in the UK by 2045 to help fight climate change. "Don't we have plenty of trees here in the UK?" you may be thinking. While we do have plenty of green spaces, wooded areas cover only 13% of the U.K whilst approximately 70% is farmland. The remaining 17% is urban or classified as 'other' (mountains, wetland, moorland).
Since trees can't be planted in poor soil such as wetlands where they wouldn't survive, seemingly the only option is to reforest areas that aren't fertile enough for crops but are of a high enough quality for trees to grow. It is a fine art of finding a balance of available land that is perfect for the regrowth of new trees.
How Do You Reforest?
Let's say you have a plot of land that already has a small wooded area or you'd like to begin a new wooded area. Charities such as The Woodland Trust will grant you funding to repopulate an area with trees. You will need to prepare the soil, plant and protect the trees, ensuring that they thrive. You can also get additional funding from the Forestry Commission to help reforest areas around the U.K.
How Does This Help With Planning Permission?
In general, when you have a reason to live on the land such as protecting animals, crops, and even trees will help you to achieve permission for your tiny home. This in itself is still a considerable upfront cost of land, a tiny and your reason to live. Unless you happen to come into some cash, the dream of executing all of this can feel pretty far away.
What Plan Do We Have?
While we only have plans and grand ideas, we have thought of a solution that we'd love to put forward should enough people want to get involved. We were thinking of splitting these costs between 8-10 homes who would also need to work on the land to complete the committed tasks such as planting trees and taking care of an allotment.
The Grand Idea
Our inspiration comes from ReforestNation from Scotland. A team which initially crowdfunded an industrial saw to build homes while they replanted trees and grew food on the land. Their plan was good, yet the time, energy and other costs of building cabins found that their funds ran low rather quickly. Still, they are doing a remarkable job and are currently on their way to planting 10,000 trees.
Further inspiration comes from 1000 Huts project in Scotland where they are building several small communities in wooded areas thanks to legislation which they were granted to be able to build the huts legally. It was a mammoth effort from the charity, taking 7 years to get the change in planning to allow such huts to be built to certain regulations in woodland and forests.
To copycat their approach in some ways, we would be looking to buy a large enough piece of land in England to place 8-10 tiny homes on the land, creating a tiny house community. In order to gain planning permission, each house would require a reason to be on the land; in our case, it would be as forest workers to reforest the land. This community would need to be passionate about the environment as people would be required to volunteer their time to plant more trees & grow crops weekly. Each month, targets would be set collectively to regrow the wooded area surrounding us, essentially enclosing ourselves into the wooded area.
The plan is loose, and details are being currently working on. We don't know if it's possible and we don't have a time frame, but our motto is if you don't ask, you don't get, so why not give it ago?
That's it from us! If you are intrigued by our ideas or have any of your own and would like to get involved with us, feel free to get in touch with us.