£2,500 ransom money to leave a caravan park
K.R. writes: In October 2020, we purchased a static caravan at Caer Mynydd Caravan Park in North Wales. It was a small, family-run park with a happy, friendly environment. Last August, the park was sold to the Hill Brothers and the environment changed overnight. We were issued with a 16-page licence agreement that, if signed, would give them complete control over ourselves and our caravan.
YOU have told me that you refused to sign the new agreement. You had paid the previous owner your site fees through to March this year, and expected this to be honoured. However, you say you were told you had to pay the Hill Brothers £1,000 by the end of October, and a further £2,000 by the end of 2021. Fail to pay, and you would face a demand for £6,000.
Not surprisingly, you decided to move out and take your caravan to a new site. But you were then told that you had to fork out £2,500 for the Hill Brothers to disconnect your caravan and tow it about 200 yards to the site exit. You say you were also told that you had to give the new owners a period of notice which would have taken you up to the date when a whole new annual fee would be due.
You tried to sidestep this situation by hiring help to relocate privately, and the site manager seemed to go along with this.
But when your help arrived, the site manager called the Hill Brothers’ head office and was told to block the exit and refuse to let you leave unless you handed over £1,500. You told me you felt you had no choice, so you paid.
This should have been the end of the horror story, but the next day, when the transporter arrived to remove your caravan, the site manager rang his head office again.
This time you were told to pay another £1,000, which you described to me as ‘ransom’. You finally escaped from the Hill Brothers’ clutches, but you say some owners have simply abandoned their caravans at the site.
The Hill Brothers and their company Britaniacrest Limited run a number of similar holiday parks and are no strangers to official attention.
Wirral Council has been investigating their Park Lane site which is only permitted to have holidaymakers but where customers were allegedly told they could live all year round without paying any council tax. There have also been complaints there from customers who say they were ordered to buy a new caravan from the Hill Brothers or get out.
And at the Westend Residential Park, not far from Blackpool, caravan owners say that after the Hill Brothers bought the site they were told existing contracts were no longer valid, and fees almost doubled.
The Hill Brothers were repeatedly invited to comment but did not respond. If they change their minds now and offer any explanation for what you have told me happened in North Wales, then we shall publish it here.
But it does appear that there is a pattern of behaviour, and anyone thinking of buying a caravan on one of their sites should be very, very careful.