Council blocks business from keeping tipi tents

The council refused to give permission for the Frogge Street-based business to keep the three tipi tents

A business has been blocked from keeping three ‘giant tipi tents’ to host weddings and events.

The owners of Riverside Barns, in Ickleton, Cambridgeshire, said the tipi tents were helping to support the independent shops and café also based at the site.

South Cambridgeshire District Council rejected a planning application to keep the tents up permanently, claiming the site was in an “unsustainable location”.

The authority also said it had not been given enough information about the new events business and in relation to flooding.

Officers said there was also “insufficient information” within the flood risk assessment

The owners of Riverside Barns said the site had been deteriorating in the years before they took it over in 2022 and, in planning documents, said they had been investing in and regenerating the site.

Three canvas tipi tents were erected as part of the regeneration without formal planning permission.

The owners said they did not know that the tents would need to be taken down between events for permitted development rights for temporary buildings to apply.

"It is no small task removing and re-erecting these tipis and added to this the applicant has found the tipis to be popular and would therefore like them to remain permanently," said the plans.

“The addition of these tipis since their introduction has helped to contribute to the more favourable trading conditions of the other businesses on site and therefore they contribute to the local economy by virtue of their continued presence.”

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said Ickleton Parish Council was worried that keeping the tipi tents would make the site an events venue, with events potentially becoming the “major element of the site”.

It also said the tipi tents were an “intensification of development”, which the parish council argued was “incompatible with its location in the countryside”.

The planning application was turned down by the district council.

“The scale of the events business would be significant and result in incremental growth in an unsustainable location," said planning officers in their report.