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

Costs

What is a site fee actually paying for?

Site fees buy the pitch and the upkeep of the land around it. They usually exclude your gas, electricity, water, insurance, safety checks and the business rates on your pitch. What six operators publish, what the site licence forces a park to provide, and the rateable value statement you have a legal right to inspect.

Published 2026-07-31 · updated 2026-07-31 · 10 min read · all figures sourced below

A site fee buys the right to keep your holiday home on one pitch for the season, plus the park's upkeep: roads, lighting, drainage, landscaping, security and use of the facilities. It does not buy your gas, electricity, water, insurance or annual safety checks, and at most parks it excludes the business rates on your pitch too.

No operator publishes a line-by-line breakdown. Every park page checked for this article lists what the fee covers and what is billed on top, with no per-item figures. So the answer has two halves: what operators say they provide, and what the site licence and the tax rules force them to provide.

What do operators say site fees cover?

Five of the six operators checked describe the fee the same way, as the pitch, park maintenance and access to the facilities. They disagree about which specific services sit inside it. Haven says its site fees "cover all park maintenance, landscaping, security and use of park facilities", and is blunt about what you own: "you'll be the proud owner of the holiday home itself, but not the land. Your annual fees cover your right to occupy a pitch, as long as you stick to our park rules."

Park Holidays UK publishes the longest list: landscaped ground maintenance, grass cutting and edging, refuse collection, street lighting, a security gate and fob, a park warden, standard superfast broadband, and upkeep of and access to facilities like swimming pools.

Away Resorts covers park landscaping and gardening, refuse disposal, road and drainage maintenance, street lighting and park security systems, plus up to eight owners' passes for the facilities. Its list excludes Retallack Resort and Spa. Darwin Escapes covers the plot, upkeep of and access to the facilities, and landscaping and grounds maintenance. Shorefield covers maintenance and security, entrance to all the park venues and facilities, the right to site your holiday home, grass cutting and general park upkeep.

Two contradictions change what a headline fee means. Park Holidays and Away Resorts both put refuse collection inside the pitch fee. Shorefield puts it in a separate annual "rates" bill, which it says covers "refuse collection, local rates, water and wastage". So water sits inside the annual rates bill at Shorefield, while Haven and Hoburne bill water as its own charge. Park Holidays also lists standard broadband inside the pitch fee, then lists internet among the bills you pay on top.

The National Association of Caravan Owners draws the line usefully: the fee pays for the water, electricity and drainage connections, but not your usage.

What the site licence forces the park to pay for

Part of your fee funds things the park has no choice about. Under section 5(1) of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, a council can attach licence conditions requiring the park to take "proper measures... for preventing and detecting the outbreak of fire" and to provide "adequate sanitary facilities, and such other facilities, services or equipment as may be specified".

Section 5(6) lets the Secretary of State publish model standards a council must have regard to when setting those conditions. For holiday parks in England that document is the Model Standards 1989 for Holiday Caravan Sites, not the Model Standards 2008, which state that they do not apply to sites which only have holiday caravans. Councils can depart from them, so read your park's licence, which standard 30 says must be displayed prominently on site.

The 1989 standards set out what the fee maintains:

  • A fire point within 30 metres of every caravan and site building, in a weather-proof structure marked "FIRE POINT", with a means of raising the alarm at each one.
  • At each fire point, a hose reel with a hose of at least 30 metres, or hydrants within 100 metres of every standing, or two 9 litre water extinguishers where water pressure is too low.
  • All alarm and fire fighting equipment tested and maintained by a competent person, with a log book of tests and remedial action.
  • Roads laid out so no caravan standing is more than 50 metres from a road, roads not less than 3.7 metres wide (3 metres on a marked one-way system), and roads suitably lit.
  • Minimum spacing of 5 metres between aluminium-skinned caravans, or 6 metres where units are plywood-skinned or where the park mixes the two.
  • Gross density not exceeding 60 caravans per hectare, calculated on useable area, excluding lakes, roads and communal services.
  • Periodic inspection of the site electrical installation, yearly or at longer intervals up to three years. The standard states plainly that "the cost of the inspection and report should be met by the site operator or licence holder".
  • Refuse bins for every standing, with arrangements for regular emptying.

A park cannot pack more units onto the same field to spread the cost of all this.

Does your site fee include business rates?

Usually not. Most operators recharge rates as a separate annual bill, and the law is why.

Under regulation 3 of the Non-Domestic Rating (Caravan Sites) Regulations 1990, pitches for leisure caravans that would otherwise be separate hereditaments are "treated as one hereditament and as occupied by that site operator", with the rest of the site the operator occupies. Your pitch is folded into the park's single rating assessment and the operator is the ratepayer. HMRC says the same at paragraph 4.4 of VAT Notice 701/20: caravans on seasonal or holiday parks are not subject to council tax unless used as a sole or main residence, and "instead, the owner of the caravan site will be liable to pay non-domestic rates for the whole site".

The Valuation Office Agency states that "unusually, the owner of a static caravan is not the rateable occupier", and that the notice it must serve on the operator "also helps site operators to calculate the licence fee for the privately occupied static caravan pitch, which will typically include a service charge".

Here is the part almost no owner knows. Regulation 4(1) requires the valuation officer to tell the operator in writing, within a month, how many caravans occupied by other people are in the assessment and "how much (if any) of the rateable value of the hereditament is attributable to those caravans, together with their pitches". Regulation 4(3) then says any person occupying a pitch for a leisure caravan on a relevant site "may after giving reasonable notice to the valuation officer at any reasonable time and without payment inspect a copy of any statement supplied to the operator of that site".

So you can see, free of charge, how much of your park's rateable value the VOA attributes to private caravans and their pitches, and how much to the clubhouse, pool, restaurants and shops. NACO calls it a Regulation 4 Notice and cites an example covering a park with 313 privately occupied caravans. It also notes that no legislation dictates how a park must divide the bill between owners, so the wording of your agreement decides what can be charged.

Haven bills rates separately and states the basis: the charge "is based on the average holiday home rateable value notified to us by the Valuation Office Agency", invoiced in November for the following calendar year. Hoburne's FAQs list site fees, local authority rates and water charges as separate items paid in advance, refundable pro rata if you remove your caravan.

Why is there VAT on a site fee?

Because a holiday pitch is standard rated. Paragraph 4.1 of VAT Notice 701/20 states that pitches "on holiday or leisure sites" are standard rated "regardless of how they're used", except pitches occupied by site operators' employees as their principal private residences. Exemption is reserved for permanent residential sites. Shorefield says so on its own page: all site fees displayed "are reflective of the normal rate of VAT (20%) being applied".

Metering then changes the tax on everything else. Under paragraph 4.2, gas and electricity can be charged at the reduced rate where the park can identify actual consumption by metering each pitch. Under paragraph 4.3, metered water and sewerage can be zero rated. Where consumption cannot be identified, the charge follows the pitch and is standard rated. So an unmetered water charge carries 20% VAT and the same charge metered at your pitch carries none.

Two other lines matter. Paragraph 4.4 says that where an operator passes on non-domestic rates, "the recharge will form part of the pitch fee or rental and will be standard rated", so you pay VAT on a rates recharge. Paragraph 4.5 splits service charges in two: general upkeep of the park as a whole is part of the consideration for the pitch, while specific services to particular residents are standard rated in their own right.

What the site fee does not cover

Haven publishes the most detailed figures, based on costs at Golden Sands, Lincolnshire in January 2026: annual site fees of £4,770 to over £10,000, average gas and electricity of £426, average rates including water of £324, and insurance of £217 to £495, for an annual total of £5,737 to over £10,000. Its FAQs say water charges vary by park and were between £330 and £600 in 2024, and that a gas central heating test and service, an electric test and a PAT test together cost £163 at 2024 auto-renew prices.

Haven's own figures do not reconcile, which is a warning about starting prices generally. The running-costs table says site fees start at £4,770. The FAQ says they start from £4,645. The park selector says from £4,395. Another FAQ puts the whole basket of site fees, rates, water, gas, electricity, safety tests, insurance and alarm maintenance at a start of £5,627, below the £5,737 total in the table despite covering more items. Ask which number applies to the pitch you are being sold.

On published starting fees, Park Holidays UK lists standard holiday home pitch fees from £3,675, luxury lodge pitch fees from £4,745 and large holiday home pitch fees from £5,345. Shorefield publishes fees from £5,422, based on a 12ft static caravan at Forest Edge Holiday Park. Darwin Escapes gives an average range of £4,470 to £8,234. None of those three pages states which season the figure covers, so treat them as asking prices on 31 July 2026, not fees for a stated year.

NACO adds decking, skirting, boiler and appliance maintenance, entertainment or leisure passes and annual safety checks to the list of what owners pay separately. Add the running costs to the fee before you compare parks. Our ownership cost calculator does the arithmetic, and the true cost of owning a holiday lodge sets out the rest of the annual bill.

What to ask before you sign

Ask for the fee in writing, listing everything it covers, then ask for every charge billed on top and when each falls due. Rates and water are commonly invoiced in November for the following calendar year, so a spring purchase can put two bills close together.

Ask whether your water, gas and electricity are metered at the pitch. That single answer decides whether those charges carry 20% VAT or none.

Ask the park for its Regulation 4 statement, or contact the valuation officer, who must let you inspect a copy free of charge. Then ask how the park divides the rates bill between owners and its own trading facilities.

Ask whether the first season is charged pro rata. Shorefield includes its 2025/2026 site fees pro rata in new purchases, and Haven reduces the fee according to how much of the season is left.

How much the fee can then rise, and what a fair increase clause looks like, is covered in why site fees keep rising and what rights you have.

Sources