Farm diversification: the wellness case, costed
A bookable wellness offer on land you already own — what Defra's diversification data shows, day access versus private hire, and where to take advice.
Farm diversification is income the holding earns from something other than farming the land — and in England it is now the majority position, not the exception. 72% of farm businesses had some diversified activity in 2024/25, up ten percentage points since 2015/16 (Defra, Farm Business Survey 2024/25, updated 12 May 2026). This guide covers one route inside that number: a bookable wellness offer — heat, cold, rest — on ground you already own.
We make the buildings, so read this the way you’d read any supplier’s guide. Every figure below is attributed and checkable, and where the published evidence runs out, we say so rather than filling the gap.
What counts as farm diversification, and where wellness sits
Defra treats an activity as diversified when it uses the farm’s own resources — land, buildings, labour — for something outside agriculture. The published breakdown for 2024/25 (England, all Farm Business Survey holdings):
- Letting out buildings: 50% of farm businesses. The largest single route by a wide margin, and one percentage point up on the year before.
- Solar generation: 27%, up nine percentage points since 2015/16.
- Tourist accommodation and catering, then sport and recreation, form the next tiers.
A heat-and-cold offer has no line of its own in that survey. It sits across the last two: accommodation-adjacent when the sauna serves cabins or a campsite, sport-and-recreation when sessions are sold on their own to people who drive in, use it, and leave.
Farm diversification ideas compared: what does each route earn?
Averages per farm running that enterprise, 2024/25:
| Route | What it asks of you | Defra 2024/25 average |
|---|---|---|
| Letting buildings | Redundant buildings, consent for the new use, a tenant | £27,900 |
| Other renewable energy | Wind, hydro, biomass or digestion — a connection and a long contract | £19,800 |
| Tourist accommodation & catering | Beds, welfare, cleaning, year-round marketing | £8,700 |
| Sport & recreation | Access, parking, insurance, supervision | £3,600 |
| A booked wellness offer | One building, power, water, parking, a booking page | Not separately reported |
One caveat on the second row, since it is the most misquoted line in the release: solar is on 27% of farm businesses, but Defra publishes no separate average income for solar. The £19,800 is other renewable energy, and it is routinely repeated as a solar number. Across all diversified enterprises the average was £31,100. Read the table honestly and two things fall out.
First, most farm tourism is a sideline. £8,700 is the centre of gravity for accommodation and catering, and £3,600 was the lowest of the named categories. An average spans everything from six weekends of a shepherd’s hut to a full site, so it tells you where the category sits, not where your ceiling is — but anyone selling you farm tourism as a rescue should have to explain that number first.
Second, the tail is where the businesses are. Diversified income accounted for at least half of farm business income on 26% of diversified farms, and at or above 100% on 12% — that second group being farms where the rest of the business was, on balance, losing money and the diversified enterprise carried it. Those are not average farms. They are farms where someone treated the enterprise as a business rather than a sideline.
And the last row of that table has no benchmark because Defra doesn’t count it separately. Treat the absence as what it is: the category is too young to have a published average. That cuts both ways.
Why heat and cold rather than another use for the field
The nearest hard evidence sits in the outdoor-stay market. In Canopy & Stars’ 2026 market report, 64% of all new spaces added in the past two years included some kind of outdoor bathing, rising to 85% among the highest performers.
The honest caveats, because that gap gets read as a promise: it is one collection rather than the whole market, it counts outdoor bathing of every kind — hot tubs included, not saunas alone — and the highest performers differ from the rest in location, size, pricing and photography as well as in what’s in the garden. The distance from 64 to 85 is a correlation, not a return, and we have not seen a published figure that isolates what a sauna alone adds to a booking. What the report does show is that outdoor bathing has moved inside the booking decision for the outdoor-stay guest — from a feature people notice to a filter people use.
There’s a second argument, and it’s a calendar argument rather than a statistic. A sauna’s strongest months are November through March: cold, dark, wet — precisely when a campsite, a farm shop or a wedding barn is quiet. If the point of diversifying is to smooth the year rather than pile more onto the July peak, that inversion is the thing worth testing against your own booking history before you spend anything.
Day access or private hire: the two operating models
Both are proven; neither is the right answer in general.
Day access sells entry to a timetable. Löyly in Helsinki lists two-hour public sauna entry at €29, with extra hours at €12 (listed price, loylyhelsinki.fi). This model needs parking, changing, welfare facilities, hygiene turnaround between sittings, and somebody whose job that is.
Private hire sells the whole cabin by the slot. Gleneagles lists a private 90-minute outdoor sauna and cold-water session at £220 for one or two guests, then £80 per person after that (listed price, gleneagles.com). This model needs a booking page, a code on the door, and a cleaning round — not a staffed reception.
The models also differ in who the customer is, and on a farm that difference matters more than the price. Private hire mostly sells to people already staying with you, or driving out for an occasion: low volume, high value, barely any traffic. Day access sells to a local catchment, week after week — usually more revenue per building on the same footprint, but also cars, signage and opening hours. The second version is a different conversation with your neighbours and with the highways officer, and it is much cheaper to have before you order than after the first busy Saturday.
On a working farm with nobody spare at four in the afternoon, private hire is usually the honest starting point. Day access is what you graduate to when the calendar justifies making it somebody’s job. The per-slot arithmetic — run for a quiet start, a steady book and a full calendar — is set out in how to start a sauna business, and the amenity’s role alongside cabins and pitches is on our page for glamping and outdoor stays.
Why reversibility is really a tenancy question
Our buildings stand on six reversible screw piles with no poured concrete. Each one cranes in in under two hours, and cranes out again with the ground reinstated. On farmland that specification does more work than it does anywhere else, for three reasons.
Tenanted ground. Non-agricultural use of let land generally requires the landlord’s written consent, and what you may remove at the end of the term is governed by your agreement rather than by custom. A building that unscrews is a materially different conversation from one that’s poured — and it stays your asset if the tenancy ends.
Owned ground with strings. A charge over the land, an agri-environment agreement, or a partner who needs convincing all respond better to a demountable asset than to a permanent one. If the enterprise doesn’t work, the field goes back.
Designated landscape. In a National Park, an AONB or a coastal setting, the reversibility case largely is the case: no excavation, recessive materials, land returned to its prior state. What that argument does and doesn’t achieve is covered in outdoor sauna planning permission.
A foundation is an argument, not a permission. We supply the engineering documentation pack; the filing stays with you and your consultants.
Where this guide stops: planning and tax
Two areas need paid professional advice before capital is committed, and this guide is not it.
Planning. Paying guests on agricultural land is a change-of-use question before it is a building question, and the rules differ across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland — and between councils inside each. A pre-application enquiry costs a modest fee and thirty minutes, and it tells you which category you’re in before you’ve signed anything. Take drawings; case officers respond to specifics.
Tax and succession. From 6 April 2026, the 100% rate of agricultural property relief and business property relief is capped at the first £2.5 million of combined agricultural and business property, with relief at 50% above that (Saffery, summarising the reform). Whether a wellness enterprise sits within agricultural property relief, business property relief, or neither, is genuinely case-specific and has real money attached. Ask your accountant and your land agent before you build, not after.
This guide informs. It is not planning, legal or tax advice, and nothing in it survives contact with your particular title, tenancy and accounts.
Start small enough to be wrong
The phased version is one building, a cold shower or barrel, and somewhere to sit. The NOOK Sauna holds four to five bathers and reaches 80°C in 30–40 minutes on a HUUM Drop 6 kW heater — hemlock inside, ThermoWood-D outside, published from €39,000 / $45,000, production 8–10 weeks for a single cabin (8–12 across a multi-building scope), with a one-year commercial warranty extendable to three.
Run that for two seasons and you will know more about your own demand than any market report can tell you. Then add stations on the same reversible foundation — a changing room first, usually. The rooms that do that work, with their list prices, are on wellness spaces; the operator case for the full circuit, including how the two operating models are staffed, is on hospitality.
If you’re weighing a specific field, the 11-page dossier carries the drawings, the foundation layout and the reversibility documentation your landlord, your bank or your planning consultant will ask for first.