The Stanley Johnson second home travel ‘loophole’

Zoe=I!

I don't know about second homes but a neighbour said that she is allowed to go to her caravan.

In England, owners of holiday homes are allowed to visit them in order to check up on routine maintenance but not to sleep overnight.

I am dreading it, living in the west country, expect to be totally over run this weekend.....?

I received this from the company which owns the site on which I have a home, within the county where I mainly live.

Dear Mrs .............,

Returning to park for essential maintenance

The Government roadmap out of lockdown has continued as planned and as a result we expect the stay-at-home rule to end on Monday 29th March. Consequently, from this date you will be permitted to travel to the park in which your holiday home is located to carry out any essential maintenance work required, however, over night stays are strictly not allowed.

In order for access to be permitted, we ask that you email park at least 24 hours prior to your visit, to let us know that you will be coming. Please email your parks reception with the subject heading: Essential Maintenance Visit and supply the team with the below details:

Full Name
Holiday home details
Date of visit
Number of people visiting
A brief overview of the essential works to be undertaken
For those owners who sublet with us, you will need to visit reception on arrival where you will be given a temporary key card and shown how to gain access to your lodge via the new digital lock system. Please note – this is a short-term measure to prevent owners who have had digital locks installed having to make an owner booking for a day visit. Further information about the new digital lock system will be communicated in due course. In addition, please note that for owners on our sublet scheme, your water will be turned back on and your holiday home checked for any leaks prior to Monday 29th March.

For all owners that do not sublet with us, you are able to head straight to your lodge. In addition, if you would like the water to be turned back on in your lodge, please contact your park team and we can of course do this for you. Please note that access is required by our maintenance teams for us to carry this out on your behalf.

We hope the government roadmap continues to roll out as planned and that we will be seeing you on park for overnight stays from Monday 12th April 2021.

Kind regards,

We have 12th April in our sights to travel to our seaside cottage, 80 miles away. We haven’t been since November - the longest we have stayed away. Hopefully the road map won’t change ?

That's bonkers! What if you live in London and have a seaside property to get ready 250 miles away in Devon? You need to stay over several nights.

Wonder if the Welsh border will be opened, hope not.

Thanks for all the replies. So really, nothing has changed today in this respect. I’m unsure why the media have flagged it up then (albeit not everywhere). It does seem illogical. We’ve been doing day trips to ours but there’s a lot of decorating and cleaning to do (after building work) which would be quicker and easier if we could stay even one night. Still, it’s only a couple of weeks to wait now.