A couple have been forced to leave their home in a caravan park after living there 'illegally'. Doug Davis and Pam Donovan have lived in the Porthkerry leisure park and paid council tax on their standard van for 20 years.
The pair are among a group of residents who have been asked to leave to leave their homes after living there 'illegally' for two decades. WalesOnline reports the Welsh Government asked owners to leave the site and return to their main homes during the first Covid lockdown in 2020.
It was only then they realised around 40 people had been living on the site for 10 months a year in caravans only permitted for use permanently after they had sold their first homes.
The caravan site is now under the new ownership of Vale Holiday Parks who took it over this year on the provision that former owner Phil Edwards would end the permanent living issue. In the UK it is illegal to live on a holiday park in a caravan permanently without a primary residence elsewhere.
The temporary home should be used for recreation and holiday use only and does not require council tax payment.
Doug, 73, and Pam, 77, are part of a small group of people who left in June after coming to an out of court settlement with Mr Edwards costing tens of thousands of pounds. But they insist say they were unaware they were living on the park illegally.
The couple say they paid £120 a month in council tax each year to the Vale of Glamorgan Council, which showed they were living on the park permanently. All their payments to the council showed they were living there for ten months of the year, and were never told what they were doing was wrong.
Vale of Glamorgan Council would not comment on the matter. Doug said: “In 2003 Pam and I split from our partners and I moved in with Pam.
“We thought that as we were living on the site we should pay council tax, and we contacted the council to start paying. From then on we did pay annually right up until 2018 when Phil stopped the post coming to the site.
“Then we started getting our post from the post office every week, but the post office stopped doing that. Then we had to have all our post sent to Pam’s daughter in Gabalfa.” The couple say they now realise that they shouldn’t have paid council tax on a caravan unless it was their permanent residence.
Council chiefs they claim, should have known from the documents that they were living in the caravan against site rules. Doug added: “We had a letter from the environmental health officer in July stating that it only came to the council’s attention during covid.
"I can’t get my head around how it would only at that point have come to their attention.” The couple were continually given letters each month saying that they had to be off the park each year in January and February when the park closed to van owners.
They had a motorhome which they toured Britain in during those months. Pam said: “We had a wonderful time for 20 years.
“It was a shock. We couldn’t believe it. Everyone knew we were living there and nothing was said for two decades.” Pam said she’ll cherish memories of her grandchildren and late daughter at the park. Every year I went into the office, paid my money for the year, got my little slip and that was that,"
Doug said. "Everyone knew. And we loved it there.” They still go to the site every Friday or Saturday to have a drink in the club, but finally came to a settlement in the summer but struggled to find a place in the Vale where they could live.
Pam said: “We live in a small bungalow in Barry, we struggled so much to find one, We’re renting it. It’s only by luck we got it. We tried to get a council-owned property but they had none.”
Doug added: “We don’t feel we did anything wrong. If we were told what we were doing was wrong we wouldn’t have carried on doing it.
"We were oblivious. We wanted to carry on fighting but we signed in the end because we couldn’t see a way out of it.” Mr Edwards said he felt he had been fair in offering the couple £25,000 for the caravan they bought in 2018 for £21,000.
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