Caravan park fees payable in advance

I take back what I said. Our caravan park owners have contacted us with details re how the park will operate when it opens on 26 June and have told us next years fees will be reduced by £200. The fees are approx £1700 from Mar-Oct. We've shared the loss fairly I think.

I have just received an e-mail from Head Office of the owners of the site informing us that the site will remain closed until 5th July, following Government guide lines and unfortunately they will not be offering any compensation for site fees. I appreciate the site has to be maintained but I wonder how many of the staff are being employed. Not a happy bunny!

Have you read your terms and conditions in your contract with the site company, I assume there is a contract.

Do you rent out the accommodation, perhaps you could claim against your insurance, for loss of rental income.

Ours is privately owned and I know they will lose some income but I doubt they will go under gillybob.
They haven't even contacted us to say the site is closed. But they know full well no one will be there.
But it's not worth stressing about. Won't change anything.

Indeed they are annepl but I doubt they will be the caravan site owners .

If all I suffer from this pandemic is paying for my site and not bring able to go this summer I will be sad of course but many are suffering much more hardship.

There has been much discusion on the Caravan Club forums regarding this subject, including advice from Lawyers who themselves are Caravan owners and fully aware of their Legal rights and responsibilities as set out in their contract. For touring caravans, there would have been the option for most people to simply cancell their contract as soon as this outbreak began, and remove their caravan from the site, either to a storage yard or onto their their own property, drive, or that of a relative or friend if needsbe. Whilever your caravan remains on the site, they are providing a chargable service, rather like paying for land that a leasehold property stands on as an annual fee, regardless of how much time the owner of the property actually occupies it for.
The virus in some ways could be seen as ' an act of God' as in no one individual can be held responsible or sued for damages caused by it in a court of Law. The only things that you may be able to claim back are the money paid upfront for the utility Bills such as Electricity, water, and other consumables you would have used should you have been onsite rather than at home, but even this would depend on the small print wording on the sites contract, and things like site maintainance, security, and their general insurance costs are not refundable whilst they still have your caravan on site.
Those with Static caravans are at a bigger disadvantage, any disputes with the site owners, or if the site owner was to be declared bankrupt due to this crisis, their pride and joy would need to be moved off site, and not only would this be expensive, but finding a site that would accept a static that they have not sold themselves is nigh on impossible, hence the likes of E-bay et al are full of secondhand Statics going for a song. There has recently been such a situation develop on one of the East coast sites in the Skegness area, and owners have been left many thousands of pounds out of pocket. In general, there is a fear amoungst owners of similar situations developing in the long term of sites closing down for good due to financial reasons brought about by this virus. Many sites simply will not survive due to loss of weekly revenue from hirers throughout the season, being asked to refund every penny of the annual site fees from caravan owners may end up being the final straw towards a sites perminant closure.
I appologise if l have not explained this very well, I am a caravan owner myself, and have been for many years, although I prefare Touring with my pride and joy, rather than staying at the same destination every time.

Demanding money and not providing the service sounds very dodgy to me. Does it matter whether it’s the use of a caravan park, a hotel, a flight or whatever. They cannot provide the service for which they are demanding the money.

We have paid our fees of £1700 until next January. I don't expect the site owners will allow us a rebate of any kind. They will still have to maintain the site. I think its just unfortunate. I imagine they will lose income from tourers and sale of gas.

Hello Grans, massive thanks for your responses to my caravan fees' concerns. We firstly decided to pay the site owner a fee for "storage" of our caravan based on researching how much it costs locally in Devon to use secure storage for 12 months. Worked out at £550 so we sent a cheque for that. The owner responded with thanks but followed up with a round robin email to all customers asking for full payment & to add insult to injury, if there was to be a late payment after April 31st, he wanted a late payment fee too! In the end and because we, like a previous poster, didn't want the hassle of being "thrown off site", decided to pay the substantial balance, a tidy sum for facilities we can't use. Grrrr. We await news about any reimbursement but doubt it will be enough to compensate for our losses. The site owner is after all a business man/farmer and albeit he may qualify for Govt business grants, I'm not sure anything much will cascade to his static & seasonal pitch caravan owners who just like him, have had income streams dry up! I don't want to do him a disservice so we're waiting to see next steps.

Ours is part of a much larger 'chain' of sites - it's not on a farm or similar, so there is nobody to ask nicely, really, Davidhs. We would need to speak to the CEO, and it is clear from the website that the company is taking legal advice, as the language used is very non-committal.

I don't care about the pub. We hardly ever use it, but without any facilities, and particularly as there is nobody there, so there is no day-to-day management), it's difficult to know what we are paying for, and it's a lot of money. I wouldn't want to be unreasonable at a time like this, but I would bet that the parent company will not be paying staff who aren't working, as most are on zero hours seasonal contracts. It seems to me like the owners are just sitting back and raking it in.

As I said in my last post, I realise that they hold all the cards, as not paying would mean eviction, so there isn't a lot we can do. I feel a bit cheated, though.

perhaps just storage fees for this summer would be appropriate

For now don’t do anything, you are parking your van on the site, the owner has done nothing wrong, it’s bad luck that you can’t travel. In a month or two you probably will be able to use it provided you maintain social distancing, the pub will probably be closed so you will be self catering.

There is no harm in asking nicely if he can reduce fees, in the circumstances, bearing in mind he will have to do it for everybody on site, maybe he will, maybe not. He will still have had to maintain the site and pay all his overheads.

Me too. I wonder if we are on the same site, GrandmaBabs. We were advised to follow government instructions not to travel before they closed the sites, so technically the site was still open, even though we couldn't use it. Then they closed the shop, pub etc, before eventually closing it altogether when they had no choice.

People have asked about fees on their social media sites, but have been fobbed off. The trouble is, if we could insist that they give us our money back, they could insist that we move our lodge, and where would we put it (and how would we move it)?

Like others, I feel that we should get some sort of compensation - it is surely up to them to insure against loss of rent for unpredicted reasons - but I'm not holding my breath.

We're in the same position as you. Paid our fees for March 2020-October 2020 and doesn't look like we will get there this year. Our van is a static. I'm afraid I don't have anything to suggest, we're just waiting to hear what the site owner has to say later on in the season. We have received one letter telling owners not to come to the site, this was sent just prior to the Government closing caravan sites. If I receive any info from the site will let you know.