Ad disclosure: this site contains affiliate links, marked (Ad). If you enquire or book through one, we earn a commission from the operator, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what our guides say.
Lodge LedgerUK ownership, honestly costed

Income

Renting out your holiday lodge: what you can really earn in 2026

Park letting schemes pay 65 to 68% of the tariff at best, peak weeks do the earning, and the holiday-let tax perks died in April 2025. The real letting income maths, fully sourced.

Published 2026-07-25 · updated 2026-07-25 · 5 min read · all figures sourced below

Every sales office has the same second act. Once you've flinched at the price, out comes the letting brochure: "earn up to £18,995 a year". The figure is real: it's Park Holidays' published 2026 maximum for a lodge. But it's a marketing ceiling, not a forecast. Here's what the letting maths looks like, from the schemes' own terms, live booking prices, and the owners who've tried it.

What the park schemes pay

  • Parkdean Resorts is the only operator here that publishes a contractual rate. Its standard "Your Lets" scheme pays the owner 68% of the Holiday Home Tariff, or 65% on the Plus tier. It requires a minimum of ten available weeks and makes you carry £2 million of public liability cover. Private letting is allowed alongside.
  • Park Holidays advertises subletting income "up to £16,415" for a caravan and "up to £18,995" for a lodge in 2026, or guaranteed letting of up to £11,375/£13,145. The guarantee runs roughly 30% below the "up to" figure, which is the price of certainty. Units must generally be under five years old, you must release at least six weeks in season, and the sublet figure is not guaranteed: as their own page puts it, if nobody stays, you don't get paid.
  • Haven's Let2offset pays you no cash. Letting income is credited against your site fee instead. You must release at least 30 letting breaks a year including six "super peak" breaks, with a home under seven years old. Haven's own worked example (Seton Sands, 2026) shows monthly letting income of £707.92 against a £701.67 monthly site fee. That is a credit of £6.25 a month, and it is the scheme working as designed: it covers fees, not ownership.
  • Shorefield allows private subletting or a managed service. Its Ambassador seasonal option charges a flat £720 to cover your guests across a roughly 35-week season, plus the compliance you'd expect (landlord gas safety record, PAT testing, serviced alarms and extinguisher).
  • Hoburne runs a managed letting service with monthly settlements but publishes no commission rate. Like Haven's commission, you'll only see the number in the agreement. Ask for it in writing before you buy.

What guests pay, and why peak weeks are the whole game

Live Hoseasons prices (captured 25 July 2026; dynamic, so treat as snapshots) show the seasonality underneath every letting projection. The same three-bed "Silver" static at Devon Cliffs books at £2,129 for the first week of August and £359 in late September, a near six-fold spread. Lodges charge more: roughly £509 to £1,239+ a week as a starting range across parks, and a two-bed lodge with a hot tub near Inverness runs £1,055 off-peak to £1,759 in school summer. The shape is identical. Six to eight school-holiday weeks generate most of the year's income.

Now re-read the scheme terms above. Haven wants six super-peak breaks; Parkdean's minimums include three summer-peak weeks. The scheme only works if you hand over the exact weeks you bought the lodge to enjoy. That is the complaint that comes up most in the owner forums below.

The private-letting benchmark, and why it flatters

Sykes' 2026 Holiday Letting Outlook (data from more than 23,500 UK rentals) puts the average holiday-let gross income at £25,600 for 2025, with three-beds averaging the same and Dorset around £26,000. Before you pencil that in: those are mostly cottages and houses, not holiday-park units on holiday licences with seasons of 10.5 to 11 months. And it's gross. Sykes' own costs guide takes 18 to 22% commission plus VAT, puts changeover cleaning at £115 to £175 a time for a 2 to 3 bed, and warns energy bills run three to four times a residential property's.

The tax rug-pull: FHL is gone

Until recently, letting a lodge could qualify as a Furnished Holiday Let, which came with real tax perks. HMRC abolished the FHL regime from April 2025. Since then: mortgage and loan interest relief is restricted to the 20% basic rate, capital allowances on new expenditure are withdrawn, the capital gains reliefs (including business asset disposal relief, outside a three-year transitional window) are gone, and letting income no longer counts as relevant earnings for pension contributions. Any letting projection that assumes FHL treatment is out of date, and so is any calculator that does. Insurance changes too: subletting needs explicit hiring-out cover (Compass includes it as standard; Leisuredays sells it as an add-on with a £250 excess), on top of the £2m+ public liability parks demand.

What owners report

The forum threads say much the same thing. A MoneySavingExpert owner with £4,400 site fees reports rental income that "falls well short" of total running costs. An older MSE thread on a £25,000 van with £6,000 fees estimated roughly £12,000 a year net just to break even. A Mumsnet thread weighing a lodge with £10,000 fees against £2,000 peak weekly rents lands on the same problem we saw above: the income is real, but it lives in the weeks you wanted for yourself. Haven's Seton Sands example is the honest best case. On strict scheme terms, letting can neutralise your site fees.

Before you sign

Letting can cover your site fees on a park scheme's terms, with a newish van, releasing peak weeks. Haven's own example nets £6.25 a month after fees. It will very rarely cover total ownership cost: depreciation and running costs sit on top, and the FHL tax cushion is gone.

So don't buy on projected letting income. Buy because you'll use it, and treat letting as a fee-offset. Model your own honest numbers in our ownership cost calculator: the weeks you'll truly give up, at 65 to 68% of realistic rates.

Sources