Park Home Insurance

Because a park home is a caravan in law: capable of being moved, standing on a pitch you hold under an agreement rather than land you own. A house policy prices a masonry rebuild on your own land and has no basis for delivering and siting a replacement or clearing the old one. One insurer’s own buying guide warns that insuring the wrong kind of home on the wrong policy risks a declined claim.

The cost of a new home of the same size and style, delivered, sited and connected, with the old one cleared away. Not the purchase price and not what a buyer would pay now. Two wordings read pay transport, re-siting and debris removal from inside the figure; the others pay them on top, capped or uncapped, so ask which applies. Review it every year, since none of the wordings read index-links it.

The claim is reduced. Two wordings read pay half the claim if you insured half the replacement cost; another reduces it in proportion; a fourth takes off wear and tear; the fifth reverts from new for old to market value. The Financial Ombudsman’s published approach expects the insurer to have asked a clear question about replacement cost first, but the safest answer is a figure from a dealer.

Three of the five wordings read print new for old for the structure, and the other two pay the full cost of replacing the home, in every case provided the sum insured is enough and the home is replaced. One insurer says on its own site that it offers no market value cover. Another wording reverts any home made before 1980 to market value, with a deduction for age and wear. If your home is older, check that clause first.

On the wordings read, yes, but on different terms. Two pay clearing debris, transport and re-siting from inside the sum insured, so the figure has to allow for them. Two pay them on top of the sum insured but cap them at £10,000. One adds them on top without a cap. Where they sit decides whether the number on your schedule is enough.

Thirty consecutive days on two of the wordings read, sixty on the other three. Beyond that, theft, escape of water and malicious damage typically drop out unless you agree an extension, which comes with inspections, a drain-down or minimum heating, and sometimes a higher excess. If you winter abroad, tell the insurer before you go.

They vary. One wording read requires, between 1 November and 31 March, that a home empty for more than 48 hours has the mains water isolated and is then either drained down or kept at 13 degrees with internal doors open. Another, for the same months, requires the water turned off and drained or the heating held at 10 degrees while you are away. Frost damage without the condition met is excluded.

Four of the five wordings read exclude damage while the home is lent, let or sub-let, and the fifth narrows theft, water and accidental damage cover while anyone outside your family lives there. One makes an exception for a lodger or paying guest staying with you. A relative staying while you are away is a question to put to the insurer in writing, because on three wordings the home must also be your main residence.

Yes. In law a twin unit is still a caravan provided it is no more than two sections assembled on site by bolts or clamps, no more than 20 metres long and 6.8 metres wide, with an internal height of no more than 3.05 metres. The wordings read insure residential lodges by address on a licensed park in the same way as a single unit, with a higher replacement and re-siting cost.

Yes. £5 million is the liability figure every insurer read quotes for injury to other people or damage to their property arising from your occupation of the pitch, though only two wordings print it; the rest leave it to the schedule. A visitor who trips on your steps or a fire that spreads next door is a claim against you, not the site, which is why site rules that require insurance name liability.

Flood is a standard peril on the wordings read, and a park home occupied as your sole or main residence, with a council tax band, in personal ownership and built before 2009, is eligible for Flood Re, the scheme that keeps flood cover available in high-risk areas. Newer homes and homes owned by the site operator are not. The site’s own flood history still affects the price and the excess.

Yes, and two of the wordings read define a storm by wind speed, at gusts of around 55mph, with one adding thresholds for heavy rain, snow and damaging hail. Damage from ordinary weather on a home in poor repair falls outside that definition, which is why the implied term to keep the home in a sound state of repair matters to the insurer as well as the site owner. None of the wordings read carries a tie-down or anchoring condition.

On most wordings read the definition of the home names some or all of the decking, steps, skirting, porches, verandas, garages and sheds, and three name the service pipes or connections. Anything not named is usually an outbuilding within a limit. Tell the insurer what stands on the pitch, and remember that the site standards limit how large a porch may be and how close anything combustible may stand to the boundary.

Usually not. One wording read excludes damage in transit or during re-siting that is not the result of a claim, and only one of the five covers the home in transit generally, while in the custody of a manufacturer, supplier or haulier. If you are moving pitch or park, speak to the insurer before the lorry arrives.

On one wording read, decisively: a home manufactured before 1980 is settled at market value with a deduction for age and wear, while a newer home is new for old. Other insurers rate the year into the premium rather than the settlement. The year is on the manufacturer’s plate and on the written statement, and it is the first thing a broker will ask.

The standard it was built to and the licence of the site it stands on. A residential park home is built to the British residential standard for year-round living on a residential park; a holiday caravan is built to the European holiday standard for seasonal use. They are different products to insure, and a holiday static is covered on our holiday home insurance page.

On one wording read, expressly: pitch fees and council tax you still have to pay while the home cannot be occupied are covered as part of loss of rent. Another covers ground rent that continues to be payable, the pitch fee under another name. The rest provide alternative accommodation, from £25,000 to a share of the buildings sum insured, without naming the pitch fee. Ask before you buy.

Because no single figure would be true for you. The bands this page used to carry did not come from our own customers, and a park home quote is built from the replacement value, the year of the home, the site and how it is occupied, which no average captures. If we publish our own data one day, it will carry a sample size and a date.