Is Insurance a Consideration when Siting A Caravan?
Chester Cooke was excited by the prospect of buying a caravan on the banks of the River Avon, not far from Stratford, on a professionally run, well maintained and gorgeous site with lots of amenities. Being a diligent kind of chap, he looked into all of the potential issues, after all you can’t be too careful with the thick end of twenty grand plus annual service charges, which didn’t include insurance for some reason.
He phoned his broker and asked about caravan insurance who told him that there shouldn’t be any problem and the broker would be delighted to give Chester a quote. Chester gave the broker details about the type, value and size of the caravan and where it would be situated.
A few minutes later the broker called him back. Unfortunately he would not be able to give Chester a quote for the caravan insurance. Although the caravan site met all the normal criteria, there was a problem with the beauty spot itself. It was on the banks of the river, right at the water edge, and the Avon had flooded last year. Chester remembered seeing the reports on the news. Apparently there had been lots of claims for flood damage and insurers were unwilling to write any new caravan insurance for sites on the banks of the Avon. If he was going to buy a caravan there, it would be at his own risk.
This was deal breaking news. It was highly likely that the Avon would flood again at sometime in the future and Chester couldn’t afford to take on a caravan without insurance. He asked his broker about these other “normal criteria” of caravan sites that he should look for if he was going ahead with his plan to buy a caravan.
Ideally the site should be a registered CaSSOA site. There are insurance discounts for these because they have minimum standards of security. If the caravan is to be sited more informally, on a farm for instance, the caravans on the farm should be in their own compound with a defined perimeter. Some insurers insist that there are a minimum number of caravans on the site, safety in numbers as it were. Finally Chester should look for a site with good security, a mature hawthorn hedge or palisade fencing marking the boundaries.
Chester hadn’t thought that insurance would be such an important consideration when he was buying his caravan. He was grateful that he had a knowledgeable broker who could give him all this education and he was definitely going to check it all out again before finally taking the plunge and buying a caravan. After all, he just wanted to enjoy his caravan and the insurance was only to take the worry out of the ownership.
Martin Taylor is a Director of Coversure Insurance Services
