High electricity costs
Beware: the current cost of a pitch is £25, not £22, and includes the use of up to 20kWh electricity a night. If you go over this amount you will be charged £0.60 per kWh increasing to £1.05 per kWh after 31st March. If the weather is cold, you may well be caught out by this, as we and our friends were, which makes staying at this site very expensive.
Response from the CL:
I’m sorry to hear that you consider our site fees to be unreasonable. I’d like to address some of the points you have raised. The price stated on the caravan club site states prices from £22 per night. At the beginning of April our pitch price, without electricity, will be from £18 per night.
Rising energy costs have required us and most other touring sites to install electricity meters on all our electrical hookups. Our electrical costs rise from 50p per kWh to 88p per kWh at the beginning of April before dropping to 45p per kWh in October 2023. We have to add VAT to this as it is included in pitch fee.
We recently had a guest who managed to use a staggering 38 units of power within a 24 hour period. Even with the government discount, which comes to an end at the end of March 2023, this guest cost us £22.80 in power alone. To this we have to add our fixed costs of £3 per night for waste disposal, broadband, insurance etc. Had we not asked this guest to pay for their excessive power use, this guest would have cost us 80p for the privilege of staying for the night.
The huge increase in energy prices is affecting caravan and motorhome sites disproportionately as the energy cost makes up a significant portion of the nightly fee compared to hotels, B&Bs or holiday cottages. CLs are businesses. They require a lot of effort to administer and maintain. If they don’t make any money they will close and the members of the caravan and motorhome club will lose a valuable resource.
We have no say over the cost of energy and no control over the amount of energy guests use. We recommend users of caravans and motorhomes to always turn off appliances, especially water heaters and space heaters when they are not required, especially when guests have vacated their vans. This is good for your wallet and good for the planet. You might also consider heating your van using gas.
I hope that this is a satisfactory explanation. Thank you for staying with us in the past, we do hope to see you again in the future!
