Use class B8

Use Class B8 is the "storage or distribution" category in England's planning system — warehouses, distribution centres and open-air storage yards — defined by the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 (as amended). Self storage sits within B8, and a container storage yard is a B8 use of the land. It matters because using land for storage that isn't already in B8 use is normally a material change of use needing planning permission.

The routes to getting a site lawfully consented — a full planning application, Class R permitted development, or land that already carries B8 use — are covered in depth in our guide to planning permission for a container storage site.

What Class B8 covers

England's planning system sorts land uses into classes, and B8 is the storage one. Its statutory wording is use "for storage or as a distribution centre", and it expressly includes open-air storage — which is why an outdoor container yard falls within it just as an indoor warehouse does. Self storage, whether a purpose-built indoor facility or a yard of storage containers, is treated as a B8 use of the land it stands on.

B8 was left untouched by the 2020 reshuffle of the English use classes, so it is long-established, not a recent invention.

Why B8 matters to an operator

The use class is the pivot the whole planning question turns on. Put land to storage use — paying customers' goods kept on a paddock, a former car park or a disused yard — where that land is not already in B8 use, and you have made a material change of use, which normally needs planning permission. Discovering this the hard way is expensive: enforcement is complaint-driven, and container sites are visible.

Conversely, land that already carries lawful B8 use is the lowest-friction way into the business — siting storage on it may involve no change of use at all. Which route fits your site — and how prior approval and certificates of lawfulness work — is set out in the planning permission guide.

B8 versus B2 and Class E

B8 is one class among several, and shouldn't be confused with its neighbours — chiefly Class B2 (general industrial), which covers manufacturing and industrial processes rather than storage, and Class E (commercial, business and service), the shops-offices-and-cafés class introduced in the 2020 reforms (it absorbed the former B1 business use). Self storage is neither a B2 nor an E use.

A site's current use class, and any conditions attached to its permission, decide how much planning work a storage scheme needs before it can open. Once a site is consented, self storage management software runs the licences, billing and access that turn it into a working business.

Beyond England

Use classes here are an England matter. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own planning systems — Scotland places storage in its own Class 6, and Wales has a separate Use Classes Order — so the detail differs, and you should take local advice before relying on this entry outside England.

Two things come up constantly alongside B8. Business rates apply to commercial storage use once the planning position is settled — the agricultural exemption ends when the use stops being agricultural. And what a customer is actually granted is a licence to occupy rather than a tenancy, which is covered in what is self storage software and across the glossary.

For what this means in practice when you are siting containers or converting a building, see our guide to planning permission for storage containers and the wider how to start a self storage business roadmap.