Press release —
The 5 stages of UK holiday park ownership
Holiday parks are the perfect holiday solution for many Brits, at least in principle. So what is the real story?
The appeal of park ownership
Since COVID, holiday-making Brits have flocked to rediscover the joys of our own green and pleasant land. We really do have it all: Glorious mountain ranges from Snowdonia and the Pennines to the majestic Scottish Highlands. We have the Herriotesque, wilds of the Yorkshire Dales, the jewel box Lake District, and gentler allure of the Peak District and North and South Downs. I could go on and on. And on and on.
When foreign holidays became affordable in the 1970s, as a nation suddenly we began to consider vacations in the UK as being a bit of a poor social indicator. You had to show you could afford to go abroad, and just like that: British holidays were out of vogue.
Well now Britain is back! And what better way to enjoy our country's vacation potential, than owning your very own lodge in a curated, purpose built holiday park? The lodges or permanent caravans are generally well appointed, perfectly situated and with all the amenities a holidaymaker needs. The best part? You can own your own lodge for often less money than a regular property. If you own it, you can have as many holidays as you like.
If only it were that simple.
ECC knowledge-base
European Consumer Claims (ECC) began dealing with the holiday park sector in 2024. In the time since, our team have spoken to thousands of lodge owners. There are many ways in which parks are alleged to take advantage of their customers, ranging from dishonest sales promises, to out-of-control running costs, opaque energy charges, restrictive contracts, monopolistic rules on maintenance/service providers and unacceptable depreciation in value when it is time to resell.
During our daily calls, we have built up a 'typical journey' picture of our client's experiences. This is not a one-size-fits-all timeline of course, just an averaged history, based on gathered data.
Do you recognise any of the following in your own experiences?
1. The beginning: Buying the lodge
You love the area, you love the park. Perhaps it has magical memories from your own previous holidays there. Maybe it reminds you of other caravan park holidays you had previously and you love the idea of sharing similar experiences with your own family.
You speak to a park salesperson, who happens to have a deal that suits you, on a van or lodge that you love. Perhaps he can even arrange finance for you. You ask the right questions, get assurances on the potential resale value (while the salesperson can't guarantee a figure, they do know that on this park the units generally hold their value well). You ask about the pitch fees and running costs, to make sure they won't increase unreasonably. The sales agent tells you that they never have in the past, and explains why it is unlikely to happen in the future. They explain how you can anyway cover those fees by renting the unit out when you are not using it. Maybe the park even has a program where they manage this for you.
You choose a lodge and pitch that you like, and sign the paperwork.
You now own your own slice of holiday park heaven. You can holiday when you want, any time of year including peak seasons like Christmas and summer. You can bring who you want. You can stay as long as you want, within reason. Perhaps the sales agent even told you that while the park is only licensed for holidays, many people live there all year round without any hindrance.
Perfect!
2. The honeymoon period
It all works! You have amazing holidays, at least for a while. "A while" being any amount of time from one holiday, to potentially decades.
When holiday parks work, they give people amazing holidays. That is beyond question. The units generally cost less than regular properties, and as we all know: Location location location is the big attraction of most parks. Whether they are by a popular beach or in a countryside area of natural beauty, a small, but well equipped unit is all we need to enjoy our holidays there.
For some people, the magic never ends.
For the thousands of people calling Holiday Park Advice Centre (ECC's holiday park division), the holidays do happen as promised for a time. Then elements of disappointment begin to creep in.
3. Then something goes wrong
Perhaps you need some work doing on the unit, and find that you are only allowed to use park approved workmen who charge many times the going rate for the job. Maybe the utility costs are unreasonably high and opaque in their breakdown. It could be that you are shocked when the annual costs rise at a rate far beyond inflation. Or perhaps something specific, like your pitch flooding and the park wanting to charge you a fortune to move the unit to a properly drained location.
It can be as simple as the park failing to follow through on promises to fix small faults with the unit that they agreed to do at the time of sale. Any promise made during the initial sales presentation that later turns out to be untrue can be reason enough to want to end the holiday park dream.
You might try to rent it out to cover costs, but discover the park promotes their own rentals over yours. And if your unit is eligible to be rented out through their program, you find that with all the overheads involved, you make very little if any money.
Maybe you discover that actually, despite selling your previous house to live permanently on the park, the salesperson's assurance that this would be fine just wasn't true and now you have no permanent home.
Some clients become disillusioned with declining standards or amenities being discontinued.
4. So you try to sell up
This is where the wheels really come off for most people who speak to our team. The contract makes selling the lodge difficult for the owner by:
- Giving the park final discretion in approval for every sale, and insist on meeting the interested parties before bestowing that approval. Many clients report the park then talking potential buyers into buying a lodge directly from the park instead of from the client. Clients report the park achieving this by strategies like telling prospective buyers that they will have to pay more for their site fees than they would if they had bought directly from the park.
- Forbidding the lodge owner to advertise on standard sites like Facebook marketplace. One client reported being literally evicted from the park for doing this, and given 30 days to remove his caravan. No other park in the country would accept the client moving his van to their site, despite him spending 2 full days calling parks from Scotland to Devon.
In most cases, our clients report their park then making an incredibly low offer (for example £15,000 on a lodge they paid over £100,000 for less than a year earlier). The client, unable to sell elsewhere feels trapped into accepting the offer, despite the park sales staff having told them it would hold its value, or maybe even increase.
5. The final insult
One common thread running through most of our clients' testimonies, is that once they have been boxed in to selling the lodge back to the park at a faction of what they paid for it, shortly afterwards the park resells the unit for the same price the client originally paid, to new owners.
Yes, you read that correctly. Let's take the example above. A client who buys a lodge for £100,000 decides he wants to sell it. The contractual restrictions make it close to impossible to sell it to anyone other than back to the park. The park offers him a paltry £15,000 and he feels that he has no choice but to accept.
Then, a week or two later he hears from his former lodge neighbours that his lodge was sold by the park sales team for £100,000 again.
To the casual reader who has never owned a holiday park lodge, this sounds outrageous and beyond unfair. But if you are reading this as a lodge owner, there is a good chance you know someone this has happened to.
There is a better than average chance, if you are a former holiday park lodge or caravan owner, that it has happened to you yourself.
Help at hand
Over the last few years the media have highlighted many examples of holiday park consumer abuse and the sector has been subjected to similar levels of scrutiny to the timeshare industry in previous decades.
Greg Wilson is an internationally acclaimed consumer expert and CEO of European Consumer Claims, the firm leading the fightback on behalf of mis-sold holiday park owners.
Greg explains that while the law does protect buyers in all situations from the kinds of abuses mentioned above, it usually requires expert help to get your money back.
"The Consumer Rights Act of 2015 affords protection in all UK business transactions, whether they be for services or goods. With holiday parks there are elements of both.
Greg continues: "Unlike the timeshare industry, holiday park developers do not have any specialised legislation governing their activity.
"We have called on the government to enact such legislation, but currently most people without a legal skillset need specialist assessors and claims solicitors to challenge the the parks (and by extension their lawyers) on their behalf. The type of business that accepts mis-selling and other questionable practices are generally loathe to give money back, even when it is clear they are in the wrong.
"In most cases, the offending park needs to be leveraged into a position where they have no choice but to compensate their victim financially.
"If you are unsure as to your position, or would like to know what to do about a financial loss incurred by dealing with a holiday park, the first thing to do is seek expert advice."
Related links
- European Consumer Claims (ECC)
- ECC contact page
- Greg Wilson: Consumer expert
- UK Holidays now more popular than travelling overseas
- Why some holiday parks behave the way they do - Whistleblower reveals all
- ECC asks: Should holiday parks be legally required to state projected depreciation at point of sale?
- YouTubers share gratitude for European Consumer Claims over holiday park compensation result
- Holiday parks vs timeshare ownerships. Two sides of the same coin?
- Lifeline for Cornish couple who 'lost savings' to billionaire Alfie Best's holiday park, as leading UK firm ECC steps in to help
- Leading consumer claims firm ECC targets rogue holiday park sales operations
- Wirral family trapped in constantly flooding caravan park and told that their 2 yr old, £37k, home is now worth nothing
- Winchester dialysis patient and carer lose £175k in 3 years after "heartless holiday park deception"
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ECC provides claims services, relinquishments expert advice and help
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Relevant websites for this article
www.holidayparkadvicecentre.co.uk
www.americanconsumerclaims.com
www.retirementpropertyadvicecentre.co.uk
www.timeshareadvicecentre.co.uk
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