The Pros & Cons of Council-Run Parks – Steve Munro Investigates
If you are thinking of buying a caravan on a council-run site, it is worth asking what their plan says about the park’s development. If you own a caravan or lodge on such a site, it’s possible that you or your family have been there for decades. For something that looks familiar to the usual commercially operated park, the lesser-spotted council-run version has a few factors worthy of consideration…
Given that local councils are the entities that licence UK holiday parks, it might seem strange that, in certain circumstances, they operate such parks themselves. The obvious question arising from this situation is: what, if anything, are the differences between council-run parks and those operated by the more usual commercial companies?
The first thing to get one’s head around is the fact that the council operating a holiday park doesn’t issue itself with a licence for this activity. But this doesn’t equate to the park being unlicenced. When you think about it, what would be the point of any organisation issuing itself with a licence to do anything? And, in what circumstances would such a licence be withheld? If it is accepted that the answer to the second question is “never,” the self-licencing model looks a bit pointless.
Local authority councils are answerable to residents, so it should be easier to access their decision-making process. This involves the council’s “cabinet,” whose meetings have to be held in public, (with a few exceptions that involve a) confidential information and b) public order.) In the holiday park sector, neither of these should come into play. So, the workings of a council-run park’s management should be more transparent than that of a commercial operator. There may also be recourse to the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman. Although it states on their website that they “are not an appeals body or regulator for councils…,” they can look into whether a council has used the correct criteria in arriving at a given decision.
So, there are some plus points to this arrangement. However, it could be argued that a holiday park that is operated by the local authority won’t receive the same degree of oversight by that authority as other parks under its jurisdiction. This can lead to slippage in matters like spacing of units, for example.
A cynical observer might also say that a council-run park’s decision-making process is so arcane that the park’s development can stagnate. (NACO recently visited just such a park, to advise on potential outcomes.) This can lead, ultimately, to a collective throwing-up of hands and the park being sold. NACO has also been consulted on this scenario in the past and we were highly effective in protecting the interests of caravan owners when a previously council-run park was sold to a fund managing firm. In this instance, the park management went from dithering to Draconian overnight.
Another aspect that can trouble caravan owners if the local authority operates their park, is the potential for pitch fee revenue to bleed out into the infrastructure of the region of the authority’s responsibility. Alternatively, there can be the potential for amenities developed on site to be made available to residents of the park’s surrounding area.
Summing up, although this may have presented a negative view of owning a caravan or lodge on a council-run park, there are usually opportunities to communicate with the management team and less of the sometimes personality-driven or cut-throat commercialism that the market economy can generate.
