The weather forecast looks good and we have a few spare days coming up, so we suggest to our partner "Why don't we go away somewhere in the 'van tomorrow?" "Great idea" they reply, "let's do it."
Having decided on an area to visit, we plan a rough route and get the sites guide out. But where shall we stay? Will the site have room for us when we get there? After all, it's mid-season and all the major sites will probably be full…
It is a dilemma that faces
us all at some time or another. And even if we find space at
a site, will it be one we like,
or will it be heaving with visitors? Wouldn't it be nice
to find a nice quiet site in a lovely location?
Well, why not try an alternative to mainstream sites? You could consider staying at a Certificated Location (CL), or Certificated Site (CS), such as those run by the major camping, caravanning and motorcaravanning clubs.
CLs and CSs are approved small sites, run by landowners, usually in beautiful, rural, settings. They are permitted
to take a maximum of just five units, and many supply only basic facilities: the minimum
is waste disposal and fresh water; but this needn't be a problem for the majority of motorhome owners who can be self-sufficient while staying on sites such as these.
The advantages are that pitches on these types of site are generally more easily available and offer a peaceful stay in rural calm and beauty.
Certificated sites can enable us to take advantage of the caravan parks' equivalent of 'late availability'. While the rest of the holiday market
has developed a whole sector around the idea of the
last-minute deal, as far as
a mainstream UK site is concerned, the concept just doesn't exist.
"We don't need to advertise last-minute bargains," one site owner told us, "because all our pitches are full. Pitches
get booked up sometimes a year in advance."
If you avoid high season,
a lot of these problems can be avoided but in areas with few sites, a shortage can occur at any time during the year.
It's bad news for the spontaneous motorcaravanner who wants to pack up and head for the hills at a moment's notice which is, after all, one of the joys of our hobby.
In fact, there is concern that if motorcaravanning can no longer be a means to an escape, its appeal could wane. With the network of overnight halts (or aires) in the UK virtually non existent, this famine of available pitches poses a
real problem.
Space: the final frontier
The Caravan Club (CC), and The Camping and Caravanning Club (C&CC) are well aware of this problem.
"We need to keep our members happy and that means providing them with pitches," says Tracy Edwards of the Caravan Club.
It is a sentiment with which Ruth Walmsley from the Camping and Caravanning Club agrees: "If we don't have enough pitches we'll lose membership subscriptions."
Together the clubs have around 23,500 main site pitches. Given that, in total,
the clubs also have around one and a quarter million members, a lack of space could result in many unhappy campers over, say, an Easter weekend.
But setting up new sites is a massive financial commitment and free land does not always exist in areas that people want to visit.
There is, however, a group who often have land to spare: the farming community. Farmers are being urged to diversify in order to create alternative streams of income. Unfortunately though, setting up large campsites requires a huge investment that the majority cannot afford. Added to that, the thought of the bureaucracy involved with acquiring planning permission dissuades many prospective park owners.
However, CLs and CSs require neither massive investment nor a huge amount of red tape.
The rule of 'fives'
The idea of CLs and CSs is hardly new. The C&CC's first private site was registered in 1977 and the Caravan Club has been licensing private sites since 1961. This was just a year after the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, which is the piece of legislation that allows such specialised sites to operate.
Both of these clubs, and the Motorcaravanners Club, are in possession of 'exemption certificates'. These papers mean that they only need planning permission to run a site if it holds more than five units.
This enables landowners who want to generate money from unused land to operate under licence from the clubs, without having to jump through the hoops required to gain planning permission for
bigger sites.
However, to comply with paragraph 5 of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act under which CLs and CSs exist, landowners must stick to certain regulations. One of these is
the 'five 'van rule' which seeks to ensure that the land and its surrounding facilities, such
as road access, are not being overstretched to the detriment of the environment.
You occasionally see some landowners advertising their fields for motorcaravan rally use. Surely this is breaking the five 'van rule? Well, it's not, because the field is being used specifically as a rally site – not as a CS. The field is therefore governed by a different section of the Act. The only stipulation is that ralliers are not allowed to use site facilities that are given over to CS use.
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