Support our Nation today - please donate here
News

Calls for luxury caravan and chalet owners to pay council tax

07 Dec 2021 5 minute read
Static caravans in mobile home caravan park

Gareth Williams, local democracy reporter

Owners of luxury caravans and chalets at Welsh holiday parks should be subject to paying council tax rates in the same way as home owners, a Gwynedd Councillor has claimed.

A debate on Gwynedd’s setting of the council tax premium sparked the claims following a suggestion that some luxury and even lower end static caravans at such parks can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy.

While once a summer preserve, recent years have seen a flurry of applications to open such parks all year round amid changing holiday patterns.

Yet while their owners usually pay the parks an annual fee of several thousands of pounds, including a contribution to the overall business tax bill, Cllr John Brynmor Hughes believes that existing regulations should be amended and that their owners should contribute more to council coffers and be themselves liable.

Having spoken against the rising of the premium levied on second and empty homes in Gwynedd – which was raised to 100% last April – he compared some of the higher end chalets and static caravans to homes in their own right.

Speaking during last week’s full council meeting Cllr Hughes, an independent member for Llanengan, said: “As you know I’m against the 50% and 100% (second home premiums), in my view a house is a house and every house should pay tax based whatever band they’re in.

“I wouldn’t like to know how much we’ve lost in this area (due to transfers to non-domestic rates), but one thing I’d like to say is where we’re losing out most is the caravan parks.

“A caravan, even a tourer these days is like a bungalow, they have bedrooms in them and are huge, but they’re barely paying any tax.

“We have caravan parks open all year round, they’re not paying at all.

“Say a chalet on the Warren (in Abersoch), I’ll name it, can cost between half a million and a million pounds yet pay £100 in tax, its a joke.

“We are losing taxes here yet they use our roads, dispose of their rubbish, they use the public toilets and everything a house would use. I think that we’re losing there.

“When you go abroad you have the tourist tax. I’m against the 100% (premium), I always have been, but I think we’re losing out especially during the pandemic when caravan parks are springing up everywhere.

“I would suggest we look at this again and pursue the caravans.”

Hosting 500 lodges and caravans as well as access to a local beach, a previous planning restriction meant the Warren had to close for around six weeks a year – between mid-January and the 1st of March.

‘Open all year’ 

But last year it was given planning permission to open all year round after satisfying strict measures to ensure that the caravans and lodges are purely used for holiday purposes – preventing people from using them as permanent homes – while paying council tax at their main residences.

A statement supporting their successful application, stated: “An all year round holiday season provides financial revenue benefits to the local economy, with holidaymakers supporting local trades and businesses in the surrounding area during the off peak period.”

The Warren has been approached to respond to Cllr Hughes’ comments, but a spokesman for Gwynedd Council said that most such sites were taxed as a single unit.

“By virtue of the Non-Domestic Rating (Caravan Sites) Regulations 1990, holiday parks that are deemed to fall within the legal definition of a ‘caravan site’, that include some property which is not domestic, and have an area of 400 square yards or more, are generally considered to be one taxable unit on the non-domestic rating list,” they added.

“In these cases the site operators will be liable for paying the non-domestic rates and it is a matter for them if their annual maintenance charge to individual caravan owners then contains an element of recharge for the rates.”

Meanwhile, the full council voted to retain the second home and long term empty property premium at 100% for 2022/23, resulting in their owners paying double the usual council tax.

This was despite claims from another independent, Cllr Dilwyn Lloyd, that the empty home premium was proving problematic for some locals.

“I’ve had some phone calls from people who inherited houses from deceased relatives, leaving them with two council tax bills to pay – one of them being double.

“These people aren’t well off, just coming into a home, which is a problem.

But Tywyn independent councillor, Mike Stevens, said in response: “It concerns me we’re always behind the curve here and playing catch up on people buying second homes and flipping them into businesses.

“There doesn’t seem to be enough policing, we do seem to have massive issues here.”

He added: “Regarding empty homes, with all due respect if you’ve inherited a home you have two options, you either sell it or rent it out.

“People who just want to leave them sitting there for years and years, you can’t do that, and I know down here in south Meirionnydd we have a number of houses that have stood empty for years and years.”


Support our Nation today

For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Grayham Jones
2 years ago

All Caravan parks to be Run only by welsh people in wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 we have got to stop being little Englanders and be proud to be welsh start fighting for your children and grandchildren future in wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 it’s time for a new wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Ap Kenneth
2 years ago

If these caravan parks receive planning permission to stay open all year are the business rates then re-assessed to reflect the changed business value? While I can see a rationale to charging individual static caravans, it could cause collection problems if the site owner is not the collection agent, and the business rates presumably will have to be reassessed.

Our Supporters

All information provided to Nation.Cymru will be handled sensitively and within the boundaries of the Data Protection Act 2018.