The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

qws wrote:Looking at getting a small range so I can practice my Cowboy Action Shooting. Mainly just me so not every farmer and his wife. May be a couple of friends occassionaly. So will be personal use, no commercial use.

Guess you would all need open cetificates.

1066 wrote:

qws wrote:Looking at getting a small range so I can practice my Cowboy Action Shooting. Mainly just me so not every farmer and his wife. May be a couple of friends occassionaly. So will be personal use, no commercial use.

Guess you would all need open cetificates.

Or borrow firearms from those that have an open ticket (or a condition to shoot on that land) [FA1968 S11(A)].

You would also need the firearms you wish to shoot to be conditioned for use over land on game/vermin etc.

If you are a member of a club and your firearms are for target shooting whilst a member of that club then you can’t shoot them over random land unless there is a condition on your certificate that says you can.

The target shooting condition says “only whilst a memebe off such and such a club on ranges suitable for the safe use of that class of firearm etc etc” so I suppose it comes down to what is actually a “range”.

As soon as you start moving earth to form the slightest berm you technically need planning permission.

As with anything in life there's a cost/benefit analysis that needs to be done. If you're in the middle of nowhere, with no one to annoy/get noticed by, who's to say what was or wasn't there before you started.

On the other hand if there are any roads/public views of the land/neighbours (even those who purport to get on with you), then its almost certain that your activities will end up in front of a planning enforcement officer.

Mattnall wrote:Then you should be OK to dump some soil/sand as part of your farming business and then when you need to zero use that.

If you want something more permanent or much larger you will most likely need planning. We got permission to build a shooting layout, clays and rifle butt, and as we are in the middle of nowhere there was no issue with it. I doubt anyone would have noticed or complained if we did it occasionally as a zero anyway but with the increased shooting due to shotgun coaching we thought it would be prudent to get permission.

Any chance of some photos? as a club we are activity looking for some ground to build an outdoor range

Blackstuff wrote:As soon as you start moving earth to form the slightest berm you technically need planning permission.

As with anything in life there's a cost/benefit analysis that needs to be done. If you're in the middle of nowhere, with no one to annoy/get noticed by, who's to say what was or wasn't there before you started.

On the other hand if there are any roads/public views of the land/neighbours (even those who purport to get on with you), then its almost certain that your activities will end up in front of a planning enforcement officer.

So technically if you landscape your garden and move any soil beyond ground level ( rockery or other feature ) you need permission ?

What about if its not a berm ? What if you stacked a load of sandbags ?

Call your berm a beetle bank, let the wild plants grow on it (or, better still, seed it up) and put it in your farm business plan as a consveration measure. QED......it's not a planning matter, it's an agricultural conservation measure. Maybe put a sign up so people know what it is. OK, so it's a bit higher than these would usually be but tell 'em you're really keen to make it work!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetle_bank

breacher wrote:

Blackstuff wrote:As soon as you start moving earth to form the slightest berm you technically need planning permission.

As with anything in life there's a cost/benefit analysis that needs to be done. If you're in the middle of nowhere, with no one to annoy/get noticed by, who's to say what was or wasn't there before you started.

On the other hand if there are any roads/public views of the land/neighbours (even those who purport to get on with you), then its almost certain that your activities will end up in front of a planning enforcement officer.

So technically if you landscape your garden and move any soil beyond ground level ( rockery or other feature ) you need permission ?

What about if its not a berm ? What if you stacked a load of sandbags ?

Yes and no! The planning use class the land falls into is all important. Residential curtilage normally enjoys certain 'Permitted Development' rights i.e. things you can build/alter etc without the need for planning permission, these are covered in Schedule 2, Part 1 of the General Permitted Development Order (GPDO) for householder type development. Some properties however do not have PD rights and require planning permission for ANYTHING that is considered to be development, i.e. all flats have no PD rights, some times they're removed from individual houses, streets or entire estates by a condition of the original planning approval for those developments. Even if your property does have PD rights depending on what you have done with the land you may still require planning permission for 'engineering works'. The right to do what you want with your own land was stripped from you by the Town and Country Planning Act 1947.

The GPDO then covers numerous other land classes/types of development, everything form CCTV cameras to windfarms and outlines what can and cannot be done, with plenty of room for interpretation between, think of it in the same way as the Firearms Act 1968 but much, much more complex!

Non-householder curtilage/agricultural land has next to no PD rights and as such virtually any development requires planning permission. Sandbags would be considered in the exact same way a berm of earth would unless you were taking them down and putting them back up every time you used the 'range', or every few months even if you didn't use it. The best backstop material to skirt the legislation are haybales, preferably the round ones which can be moved instantly by a single person if need be. However, they obviously have limited backstop capability and only really suited to containing birdshot shotgun ammo.

There is such as thing as Agricultural PD which allows certain activities without planning permission (including certain types of earth moving) as long as you can prove its a working farm.