Vineyard Sales & Ancillary Activities

Many vineyards make use of existing farm buildings not only for production but also for on‑site wine sales, tastings, and visitor tours.  When you apply to your District Council for a Premises Licence, it’s routine for licensing officers to consult their planning colleagues to check whether the “shop” element has planning permission.  Quite often this leads to you being encouraged to submit a planning application for retail use and all the associated visitor activity.

You don’t necessarily need to do this.  Back in 1999, David Millington of the Wroxeter Roman Vineyard took this very issue through the Court of Appeal — and won.  The judges confirmed that selling wine produced from your own land, along with allowing the public to visit and taste it, is properly regarded as an ancillary agricultural activity, not a separate retail use requiring planning consent.  This was an important ruling for small vineyards and remains highly relevant today.

A later Welsh planning appeal (APP/K6920/D/99/513513) reinforced that principle.  It held that even when the finishing processes — bottling, for example — happen off‑site, selling the finished product from the holding where the grapes were grown is still lawful without needing a change of use.  That’s particularly helpful for vineyards relying on external wineries for production but selling the wine at the vineyard itself.

The Welsh appeal also commented helpfully on small amounts of “brought‑in” goods.  It suggested that selling a limited proportion of non‑vineyard items — such as branded glassware — at around 10% of total sales was so minor (“de minimis”) that it wouldn’t trigger a material change of use. In practice, there is scope for some flexibility: keeping non‑vineyard goods below roughly 20% is unlikely to amount to a material change of use.

These arguments, based on both the Millington ruling and the Welsh appeal decision, have been used successfully in recent times — including in resisting proposed enforcement action by Wiltshire Council against a vineyard with a long‑established sales outlet.

Case reference for the 1999 judgment: David Bryan Millington v. Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions; Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council (QBCOF 1998/1478/4)

Court of Appeal (Civil Division), 25 June 1999 – Lady Justice Butler‑Sloss, Lord Justice Schiemann, Lord Justice Mantell.

So: Is ‘Millington’ still Good Law?

Short Answer: Yes.  There is no record of it being overturned, doubted, or superseded by later binding authority.  

Why?  The case was decided by the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) on 25 June 1999.  This makes it binding on the High Court, the Upper Tribunal, and all lower courts unless overturned by the Supreme Court — which it has not.

Thus, the Core Legal Principle still stands.  The Court of Appeal held that processing a crop (here, grapes) into a different agricultural product (wine made on a modest farm scale) can still constitute an agricultural use and may be an ancillary activity not requiring separate planning permission, depending on normal farming practice and scale.  This principle is still relied on in modern planning guidance and agricultural planning commentary.

Furthermore, subsequent commentary continues to treat it as authoritative.  Planning authorities and professional bodies continue to cite Millington as establishing that wine-making and associated visitor activities can be ancillary to agriculture, provided they are of an appropriate scale and nature. 

Legal and academic commentary (e.g., Cotterell & Edwards, JPEL) continues to rely on Millington as the foundation case on agricultural processing and ancillary sales.

Fun fact:  The earlier High Court judgment (Rich J, 1998), which held that wine production was not agricultural, was expressly rejected by the Court of Appeal.  Thus the Court of Appeal ruling is the governing (and still good) precedent.  There is no later appellate authority disapproving or overruling the Court of Appeal’s reasoning.

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