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What happens if your holiday park changes owner?

A sale does not end your licence agreement, but the new operator only inherits it if the agreement was properly transferred. What a new park owner can change, what it cannot, and how to check who now holds the site licence.

Published 2026-08-09 · updated 2026-08-09 · 10 min read · all figures sourced below

Your licence agreement does not end because the park has been sold, and the new operator cannot rewrite it or make you sign a fresh one. What it can do is change the things your agreement already lets a park owner change, which is more than most owners expect.

Does your licence agreement survive a change of park owner?

Yes, provided the agreement was transferred to the buyer as part of the deal. Business Companion, the guidance service run by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute with the Department for Business and Trade, puts it this way: where licence agreements are novated to the new owner, that owner takes on the benefits and obligations of the existing pitch licence agreements. They cannot make changes that the agreements do not allow for, and cannot impose new agreements upon existing owners while those agreements remain in force.

The National Association of Caravan Owners says your agreement "is tied to the pitch, not the individual park owner, which means your position is generally protected". That is reassuring but not a legal description. A pitch licence is a contract, not an interest in land, and a contract does not follow a field to its new owner on its own. It has to be assigned or novated.

The National Caravan Council's own paperwork is inconsistent on the point. Its model Combined Purchase and Licence Agreement defines "we/our/us" at clause 1.21 as "the Park Owner described in Part I", with no mention of anybody who comes after. Its Best Practice Guidance for holiday parks, third edition dated February 2025, defines the Park Owner as "The individual, company or any successors in title named in the Licence Agreement", and says at section 5.5 that the agreement "will not subsequently be amended unilaterally but it will be binding on their successors in title".

So the guidance says successors are bound and the model contract those parks hand you does not say so on its face. Ask the new operator in writing whether your agreement has been assigned or novated to it, and on what date.

That guidance applies to agreements "entered into on or after 1 May 2023". An older agreement may not be covered by it at all.

Was the park sold, or was the company sold?

Establish this first, because only one of the two touches your contract.

Your agreement names a park owner in Part I. If somebody buys the shares in that company, the company is unchanged. It is still the party to your agreement and still the holder of the site licence. Nothing has been transferred and nothing needs to be.

If instead the park itself was sold as an asset, a different company now occupies the land. Your agreement was made with the old one. Unless it was novated across, the new operator is not party to it.

On 30 June 2025 John Fowler Holidays bought Ruda at Croyde Bay in Devon from Parkdean Resorts, a 300 acre park with 817 pitches, for an undisclosed multimillion pound sum. That is the second kind of sale, one park changing hands rather than a company changing shareholders. The published reporting says nothing about the terms offered to owners on the park. That reaches them, if at all, in a letter.

You can usually tell which kind you are dealing with for nothing. Companies House publishes company information, current and resigned officers, document images, previous company names and insolvency information free of charge, and will email you when a company files a change. Check the company name and number on your last site fee invoice against the name on the new one. Same number with new directors is a share sale. A different company number is an asset sale, and that is the case where you want the novation confirmed in writing.

Can a new park owner make you sign a new agreement?

No, and you should not sign one because you have been asked to. NACO answers the question flatly, "In most cases, no", and adds that you "should not be pressured into signing a new agreement simply because ownership has changed". Business Companion says the same from the operator's side, that a new owner cannot impose new agreements upon existing owners.

There is one situation where a new agreement is the point. The NCC guidance tells a member operator that where it buys a park on which owners have no written agreement, it should offer every one of them an agreement "in writing of not less than the unexpired period from the date the holiday caravan/holiday lodge was first purchased". If you have been on a pitch for years on a handshake and an invoice, an offer of paper is worth having.

Behind that sits the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Part 1 of Schedule 2 lists terms that may be unfair. Paragraph 19 covers a term "allowing the trader to transfer the trader's rights and obligations under the contract, where this may reduce the guarantees for the consumer, without the consumer's agreement". Paragraph 11 covers a term "enabling the trader to alter the terms of the contract unilaterally without a valid reason which is specified in the contract". A new owner asking you to trade a long agreement for a short one is doing the thing paragraph 19 describes.

What can a new owner change without touching your agreement?

Everything your agreement already permits, which is the part that catches people out.

Park rules can be changed. The NCC model agreement at clause 15.1 says the park will give "at least 30 days' notice in writing" of changes, during which you can comment. The guidance at section 5.5 sets the same 30 calendar days and says park owners are entitled to make changes to the park or the way it is managed or run.

The site fee, which your agreement calls a pitch fee, can be reviewed. The model agreement at clause 9.1 requires "at least 45 days' notice in writing" before a change takes effect, with an explanation tied to the criteria at clause 9.3: third party charges outside the park's control, the retail price index at the date of the notice, sums spent on the park for the collective benefit of owners, and changes in operating costs. A new owner who has just borrowed to buy a park has an interest in that clause. Read how to challenge a holiday park site fee increase before the notice arrives rather than after, and put the new figure through the ownership cost calculator before deciding anything.

Existing rules can also simply be enforced harder. NACO says a new owner cannot remove existing protections but may enforce rules more strictly or upgrade facilities, and that any change must still comply with your agreement and the law.

One thing the NCC guidance rules out for its member parks: "During the agreement period you will not remove the holiday caravan/holiday lodge for the purposes of creating a sale or solely on account of its age." A new owner wanting newer stock on the park cannot use age alone to move you off, if that park is an NCC member and your agreement is running.

That last condition is the quiet loss in a change of ownership. The NCC Informal Dispute Resolution Service excludes "Disputes with a company that is not a member of the NCC". If the buyer is not in membership, the free route disappears with the old owner, and the guidance above becomes something you can quote but not enforce through the NCC.

What happens to the site licence and the planning permission?

The site licence has to be transferred, and the council has to agree to it. The planning permission does not move at all, because it never belonged to the operator in the first place.

Under section 3(1) of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, a site licence is applied for by the occupier of the land, and under section 3(3) it is issued only to somebody entitled to the benefit of planning permission for use of the land as a caravan site. Section 10(1) then deals with the sale: when the holder of a site licence "ceases to be the occupier of the land, he may, with the consent of the local authority in whose area the land is situated, transfer the licence to the person who then becomes the occupier". The council endorses the licence with the new holder's name and the date of transfer. Where somebody becomes the occupier by operation of law, on a death for example, they become the licence holder without needing that consent.

Section 10 also carries extra requirements for relevant protected sites in England, including a fee, specified information and prescribed matters the council must consider. Those do not apply to holiday parks. Section 5A(5) of the same Act excludes from the definition of a relevant protected site any land where the planning permission or licence is "expressed to be granted for holiday use only", or is subject to conditions creating times of year when no caravan may be stationed there for human habitation.

The transfer runs between the outgoing operator, the incoming one and the council. Owners on the park are not party to it and get told nothing by it. West Suffolk Council's licensing page sets out the mechanics: both the existing licence holder and the transferee complete their own application forms and submit them with the fee.

Planning permission is the part nobody can quietly alter. Section 75(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 says a grant of planning permission "shall (except in so far as the permission otherwise provides) enure for the benefit of the land and of all persons for the time being interested in it". Your park's opening season, its occupancy conditions and its unit numbers come from that permission and the licence conditions, not from the owner's preference. A new owner who tells you the season is changing has either applied to vary the permission or is wrong. The distinction is set out in what a 12 month holiday park licence actually means.

Does a change of owner work differently in Wales?

The Welsh licensing regime built for residential sites does not reach holiday parks, so a holiday park sale in Wales runs on the same 1960 Act route as one in England. Section 2 of the Mobile Homes (Wales) Act 2013 defines a regulated site as land in Wales where a mobile home is stationed for human habitation other than, among other exclusions, "a holiday site", and defines a holiday site as one whose planning permission or site licence "is expressed to be granted for holiday use only", or which requires times of year when no mobile home may be stationed there for human habitation. Other differences between the two countries are in buying a holiday lodge in Wales.

What to do in the first month

Keep the written reply confirming the assignment or novation, with its date.

Check the company name and number on the new invoice against the old one, and look the company up on Companies House. If you want to know who owns the land rather than who runs the park, HM Land Registry sells a title register or title plan online for £7, and official copies by post for £11.

Ask the council's licensing team who now holds the site licence for the park. Section 10 requires the transfer to be endorsed with the new holder's name and the date, so the council either has that record or has not consented yet.

Do not sign anything new until you have compared it clause by clause with what you have, particularly the remaining term, the fee review criteria and the resale terms. The costs of leaving are in the real cost of selling a static caravan, and they are the reason a bad new agreement is expensive to walk away from.

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