Use class B8

Use Class B8 is the "storage or distribution" category in England's planning system. The Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 (as amended) words it as "use for storage or as a distribution centre", and the Planning Portal says the class "includes open air storage": warehouses, distribution centres and open-air storage yards. Self storage is read as falling within B8 (no order names it, and a council decides each case), 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, and Class R has its own guide.

What Class B8 covers

England's planning system sorts land uses into classes, and B8 is the storage one. The Order's wording is use "for storage or as a distribution centre", and the Planning Portal says the class "includes open air storage", which is why an outdoor container yard is treated as B8 just as an indoor warehouse is. Self storage, whether a purpose-built indoor facility or a yard of storage containers, is read as a B8 use of the land it stands on, though no order names it.

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

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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. One exception: a building changed to storage under the Class R permitted development right is treated by the Order as having a sui generis use, not a B8 use, as the Class R guide explains.

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). On 16 October 2026 we found no planning order that names self storage, so which class it takes is for the council to decide.

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 collections that turn it into a working business.

Beyond England

Use classes here are England’s. The 1987 Order also applies in Wales, which kept the classes as they stood before the 2020 reforms, B1 included. Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own planning systems — Scotland places storage in its own Class 6 — so the detail differs, and you should take local advice before relying on this entry outside England and Wales. Our conversion guide sets out the routes in all four nations. Northern Ireland has its own storage class too, which our Northern Ireland guide names.

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.

On 17 October 2026 we found no letter among the 21 self storage appeal decisions we read that calls the use “sui generis”, and the header of 15 of them names Class B8. Our guide to self storage planning appeals counts those words and does not say how the law classes the use.

How StoreBay fits today

StoreBay is self storage software for UK operators, built to help them fill more units, automate the day-to-day and run every site from one place. Planning use class, including what falls within class B8, is not something StoreBay touches. Our self storage software page sets out what StoreBay does for an operator and what to look for in any such software. Its pricing is published.