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Insurance for a holiday lodge, what it covers and what it costs

Cover is compulsory at every major UK holiday park. Haven publishes £217 to £495 a year, Darwin Escapes £150 to £400. What the policies pay for, the exclusions that catch owners out, and whether a park can make you buy its own policy.

Published 2026-08-02 · updated 2026-08-02 · 10 min read · all figures sourced below

Insuring a holiday lodge or static caravan costs most owners somewhere between £150 and £500 a year, and it is compulsory: every major UK park makes it a condition of the pitch licence. Haven publishes £217 to £495 a year for holiday home insurance, based on costs at Golden Sands in Lincolnshire in January 2026. Darwin Escapes puts a standard static caravan policy at £150 to £400 a year in an article dated 5 June 2026.

The detail matters more than the price, because holiday home policies are not house policies. They exclude water getting in through seals and seams, they switch off cover if you leave the caravan undrained over winter, and the flood safety net that protects UK homes does not reach a caravan on a commercial park.

What does holiday lodge insurance cover?

The core is loss or damage to the unit itself, plus public liability if someone is hurt on your pitch. Everything else varies.

Haven sets out the minimum cover an owner must hold at its parks: loss or damage to the structure of the caravan, including any veranda, fixed storage units where local park management has agreed the specification, built-in equipment, fixtures, fittings and furnishings. It also requires loss of rent of up to £400 per week and £1,200 overall, accidental damage to fixed glass and sanitary fittings, replacement of external door locks up to £250, public liability up to £5,000,000, and accidental damage to service cables and underground pipes you are legally responsible for.

The £5m public liability figure is close to universal. Leisuredays, Everywhen (formerly Towergate) and Coast Insurance all advertise £5 million public liability on their static caravan policies, as does the product information document published by NACO for the policy arranged by Leisure Home Insurance plc and underwritten at Lloyd's. The Lifesure policy wording underwritten by AXA Insurance UK plc puts the same figure differently: the most it will pay for all claims arising from one accident is £5,000,000 plus recoverable legal costs.

Beyond that, the sub-limits are where policies separate. The NACO product document lists £15,000 for debris removal and resiting, £750 for contents of storage sheds, £500 for computers, and £1,000 for damage caused by vermin and domestic pets. Leisuredays publishes £10,000 for debris removal and resiting, £2,500 ground rent cover, emergency accommodation of up to £75 a day for 15 days, and legal expenses of £100,000 as an option. The same risk, two published debris removal limits £5,000 apart.

New for old is the other split. Leisuredays offers new for old on statics up to 15 years old. Everywhen offers it on caravans up to 20 years old when you take out a new policy, and says you keep new for old on the same leisure home with no age limit at each renewal. Coast Insurance says it can write new business on caravans up to 30 years old. If your unit is fifteen or twenty years old, the insurer you pick decides whether a write-off pays for a replacement or pays market value, and market value on an older caravan is a fraction of what replacement costs.

How much does static caravan insurance cost a year?

Published figures cluster between £150 and £500, though the cheapest advertised premiums are far lower. Coast Insurance advertises static caravan cover from £73.19 with an excess from £50. Haven's £217 to £495 range and Darwin's £150 to £400 range are closer to what an owner of a current-model lodge should budget. The insurers themselves will not quote a range. Everywhen says the premium depends on a number of factors and that it is therefore difficult to give an estimate on the cost of cover.

Insurance Premium Tax is inside whatever you pay. HMRC publishes the standard rate as 12 per cent, unchanged since 1 June 2017, with the 20 per cent higher rate reserved for travel insurance, mechanical or electrical appliance insurance and some vehicle insurance. A static caravan policy is not in those categories, so a £400 premium carries roughly £43 of tax within it.

Insurance is one of the smaller lines in the annual bill. Haven's running cost table for Golden Sands puts site fees at £4,770 to £10,000 or more against that £217 to £495 of insurance, and Darwin Escapes publishes an average site fee range of £4,470 to £8,234. Put your figures into the ownership cost calculator for the annual total, and read what a site fee pays for before assuming insurance is inside it. It is not.

Can a holiday park make you buy its insurance?

A park can require you to be insured and can specify the level of cover, but a term forcing you to buy the park's own policy with no alternative has long been treated as suspect. The clearest statement of that is OFT734, the Office of Fair Trading's September 2005 guidance on unfair terms in holiday caravan agreements.

Paragraph 5.12 says that while it is reasonable for park owners to require that caravans should be insured, the OFT may object to terms that, without a good and legitimate reason, require consumers to use park owners' block or nominated insurance without the option of providing comparable insurance themselves. It gives the reason plainly: tying in to block or nominated insurance may provide park owners with additional income by way of commission at the expense of consumers who pay higher premiums than on the open market. Paragraph 5.13 lists as potentially unfair any term requiring all caravans to be insured through the park owner's block policy without good reason where failure to do so costs the owner the pitch.

The same paragraph gives parks a legitimate route. The OFT saw no objection to park owners, acting reasonably, stipulating the insurance cover required and seeking a reasonable administrative fee for checking the cover if the owner takes out independent cover. Terms imposing excessive charges for this, it added, are objectionable as penalties.

One caveat you need, because most sites quoting this guidance do not give it. OFT734 has been withdrawn. The document carries a notice saying it did not take account of developments in case law, legislation or practice since publication and should not be relied on as a statement of the law or of CMA policy. The CMA's general unfair contract terms guidance, CMA37, replaced it when the Consumer Rights Act 2015 came into force on 1 October 2015. CMA37, updated again on 22 July 2026, does not address caravan insurance tie-ins at all. Nothing has replaced the specific statement about block policies.

What has standing is the statute. Section 62(4) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 says a term is unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations under the contract to the detriment of the consumer. Schedule 2 gives the indicative list of terms that may be regarded as unfair. Part 2 of the Act extends to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so this one does not vary across the border.

NACO's pitch licence checklist tells owners to establish before signing whether you must insure through the park's block insurance policy and whether there is an administration charge if you do not. Ask for that figure in writing. An unspecified charge is the problem, not the charge itself. Haven states that its arranged insurance for caravans and lodges is provided by Aviva, and that you can also arrange your own. That second sentence is the one to hold a park to.

What is not covered on a static caravan policy?

Wear, damp and maintenance, which between them account for most of what actually goes wrong with an ageing caravan. The NACO product information document lists as not insured: any contents in the open, damage caused by water ingress via seals and seams, any damage caused by mechanical breakdown or wear and tear, and the cost of general maintenance. Money, jewellery, mobile phones, photographic equipment, bicycles and computer data are excluded too.

Read that second exclusion twice. A static caravan leaks at its joints as it ages, which is the most common serious defect in a used unit, and it is the one the policy will not pay for.

Then there is winter. The NACO document says damage is excluded if you leave the holiday home unoccupied from 1 November to 1 March unless you have drained down, which it defines as turning the water off at the stopcock, opening taps and showers with nothing obstructing the plugholes, and flushing toilets so all water is drained from the cistern. The Lifesure wording underwritten by AXA sets a different window. It excludes damage from water freezing within domestic systems during the period 1 November to 15 March inclusive while the caravan is unoccupied, unless the water is off at the mains and all systems drained apart from sealed professionally fitted central heating containing antifreeze, or the heating is left running at a minimum of 15°C, or the pipes have a trace heating system approved to BS6351.

Two insurers, two end dates, a fortnight apart. Read your own policy for the date rather than the one a park or a forum quotes you. A burst pipe on 8 March is covered under one and not the other.

Flood cover is not available at some parks, the NACO document says flatly. Ask about that before you buy the caravan, not after.

Letting is a further condition. The NACO document says it will not pay for damage while the holiday home is let or sub-let unless the loss follows violent and forcible entry or exit, and will not pay any loss if you do not activate all security devices such as locks and alarms while the home is unattended. Malicious damage during letting is an optional extra, not standard. Declare it if you rent the lodge out.

The standard excess in the NACO product document is £75, Coast advertises an excess from £50, and Leisuredays applies a £250 excess to its hiring out option.

Is a holiday lodge covered by Flood Re?

Almost certainly not. Flood Re, the reinsurance scheme that keeps flood cover affordable for UK homes, requires a property to have a domestic Council Tax band A to H and to have been built before 1 January 2009.

Flood Re's guidance says a static caravan will qualify if it has a Council Tax band, but that if the caravan is part of a commercial caravan park and let out as a business it will not be included. Its list of excluded categories names static caravan site owners operating for commercial gain. Its holiday home guidance adds that the property must be used for residential purposes, with the policyholder or immediate family living there some or all of the time, or the home unoccupied.

A holiday caravan on a licensed park fails the first test before anyone reaches the others. It has no Council Tax band, because the pitch is non-domestic property and the park is the rateable occupier, which is why you do not pay council tax on a static caravan. The rule that keeps you out of council tax also keeps you out of Flood Re. If your park sits on a floodplain, you buy flood cover at whatever the open market charges, or you do not get it.

What to check before you sign or renew

Get the pitch licence insurance clause in writing before exchange, including any administration fee for using your own insurer. Check the park's minimum cover requirement against your quote, because Haven's list runs to six separate requirements and a cheap policy may miss one. Check the new for old age limit against the age of your unit, and the drain-down dates in your own wording.

If a claim is refused and you think the refusal is wrong, the route is the Financial Ombudsman Service, and the Lifesure wording sets the deadline at six months from the insurer's final response.

Sources