Thinking about park home insurance?

Sometimes the terms park home insurance and static caravan insurance may be a little confusing. What’s the difference?

Caravan cover for statics

A static caravan is one that is typically:

• permanently (or semi-permanently) located on a site;
• it is usually used for holiday occupation for a few weeks or months per year but is empty for potentially lengthy periods – particularly outside of the holiday season;
• it may be equipped to a relatively high level in terms of home comforts and fittings;
• some sites are open all-year round but others close down outside of the main season.

In terms of caravan insurance UK cover, a static caravan has its own risk profiles and insurance providers will base their calculation of the premiums on taking those risks into account.

For example, if your static caravan is unoccupied during winter on a site that is also closed down outside of holiday periods, then the risks of vandalism and burglary may be higher than in other situations.

The insurance cover for such situations is, pretty unsurprisingly, called static caravan insurance!

Park homes and park home insurance

A park home is different:

• typically these are permanently located on a site;
• they are not used for occasional holiday occupation and are closer to being a permanent home – in fact they may be a permanent home;
• many park home sites do not allow you to let out our park home;
• their levels of equipment may be higher and more personal belongings are likely to be stored inside them than is the case with static caravans. This may mean that the value of their contents is higher than in the case of other caravans.

Typically, the sites they’re located on are also open and under some form of supervision all year round.

These factors and the differences to static caravans, mean that specific park home insurance protection is needed.

Keeping your park home premium costs down

Most insurance providers look to reward responsible behaviour through lower premiums – and this applies to park home policies too.

If you show that you have fitted things such as alarms and security locks, then this may reduce your premiums. Similarly, making sure that your park home is located on a site that is not within a recognised flood area will also help!

Depending upon the exact nature of your home, the insurance providers may ask for evidence that it is well secured against wind damage and you may have certain obligations that you will need to fulfil in order to be covered..

Getting help

Hopefully this outline has helped clarify things a little but even so, sometimes the definitions between what is a static caravan and what is a park home can be open to interpretation.

Typically the insurance provider will be only too pleased to help you understand your requirements and whether or not you need park home insurance.