Charles Amos: Caravan freedom could be the prefab revolution of today

Charles Amos studied Political Theory at the University of Oxford and writes The Musing Individualist Substack.

Housing in Britain today is seriously unaffordable at about eight times average income. Immediately after World War Two, housing was similarly unaffordable at just shy of eight times average incomes. To partially deal with this shortage, Winston Churchill introduced the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act of 1944 which spent £150m on building 156,623 prefabricated houses between 1945 and 1949. Today the government could achieve pretty much the same result by simply doing this: Abolishing laws restricting people living in caravans or static homes on their own or rented land.

In Britain it is not illegal to put a caravan in your garden and leave it there all year round. Yet if you live in said caravan for more than 28 days you are breaching planning permission. Also, a person cannot live in a caravan all year round without planning permission, even if it is in the curtilage of their own home. And, caravans cannot be slept in at the side of the road due to local council road rules either, but can be left there unlived in. Also: You cannot permanently live in your caravan even in a caravan park. Essentially, wherever you put your own caravan you cannot live in it.

Now, people should adhere to the natural principle of human respect which dictates individuals should be free to pursue their own in good in their own way. Harmony is ensured in society where everyone adheres to it and forced control of private property always wrongly disrupts this peace. Thus: Caravan owners should be free to live on their own land in tranquillity without planning permission – not be pushed about by planning inspectors, busy bodies and state officials for simply existing. Certainly, few people would accept their neighbour stopping them letting out their spare bedroom, so, why should the state have any greater power over a landowner and his caravan.

Two things will be said against permitting caravan owners the right to pitch on their own land. One, the aesthetic of the area will be spoiled; two, planning permission is required to stop undue strain on local infrastructure. Neither of these objections can be sustained without stripping homeowners of a significant number of rights they properly enjoy today, hence, both fail. To begin with if living in a caravan is unsightly and can warrant being stopped then homeowners would have to be stripped of their right to have them on their own drives. Overgrown gardens, old cars which are rusting and disgusting curtains would also all have to be prohibited. This is implausible.

In the vein of Roger Scruton though let us assume it is the role of the state to police the built aesthetic of the community. If the caravan owner bought land in the middle of a wood, or, at the side of a field, then grew bushes all around it so nobody could ever see the caravan then presumably there could be no objection whatsoever. At this point the undue strain on local infrastructure argument will be made, i.e., planning permission is needed so where there is too much demand on hospitals, schools or social care people can be stopped from coming to the area.

This argument simply doesn’t work, or, runs into authoritarian conclusions pretty quickly.

A productive man of forty earning £40,000 without any children is almost certainly not a drain on any public services therefore he should automatically be permitted to live on his own land in his caravan. This is not the case today. The same goes for many young people before they have children too. Should we accept private property can be restricted whenever an owner might put strain on the infrastructure though we are led to very counterintuitive conclusions. For example, homeowners would have to be stopped from bringing their old expensive parents into spare bedrooms, guests would have to be licensed, and, you’d have to get council approval to have kids, because, all these put pressures on hospitals, roads and schools respectively. No.

Perhaps it will be said by a homeowner petrified of being surrounded by caravans that the aforementioned freedoms are important, hence, they warrant putting strain on infrastructure, while, contrastingly, people’s freedom to live in caravans on their own land is not important enough to warrant strain on the infrastructure because they could simply live in a house. I am always suspicious of these types of arguments because their proposers can never justify the exact line they draw but they’re always very confident of it not being any lower allowing for more freedom.

Nevertheless, respecting freedom here is important enough to warrant the infrastructure strain.

Today young people aged 24 – 34 spend £13,332 on rent; if two of them bought a £10,759 acre of land in South East England and bought a decent caravan each for £15,000, over five years their housing costs could be just £5,151 a year, and, young people would have assets at the end of it too. That’s a saving of at least £8,181 a year. That’s a huge increase in a person’s post rent disposable income – albeit they’d be living in a caravan. But this could just be the first step in helping people save up for a house, and, crucially, in the short term it would significantly reduce the demand for housing and thus its price too.

Sir Edward Coke once opined that an Englishman’s house is his castle; well, I say, an Englishman’s caravan should be his castle too.

As per the natural principle of human respect, people should be free to live at peace on their own land in whichever abode they so choose, whether it be a house, static home, or, caravan.  The mere fact a number of homeowners will hate this solution is irrelevant, housing affordability and freedom dictate it must go ahead.

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