Mobile homes come in all shapes and sizes and may be used for different purposes. They might all be called mobile homes, but the vast majority are moved very rarely – if at all – and remain more or less permanently on a pitch you lease from a licensed park or site for holiday homes.
Static Caravans
Probably the most familiar of these mobile homes are those that you see on holiday caravan parks in many parts of the country.
Mobile home insurance – or holiday leisure home insurance, as it might also be called – is the protection you need as the owner of such a holiday home. The insurance typically offers a number of broad features to safeguard the caravan itself and its contents against the risks of:
- fire, smoke, lightning, explosion, aircraft, earthquake;
- storm and flood damage;
- escape of water and oil;
- impacts and collision;
- riot, civil commotion, vandalism and malicious damage;
- subsidence, heave and landslip; and
- theft or attempted theft.
Public liability insurance is also typically incorporated into leisure holiday home insurance. This indemnifies you against claims from visitors to your home, neighbours, or members of the public who may have been injured or had their property damaged through some connection with your property. Such claims may assume significant proportions, so indemnity cover of up to £2 million may be provided.
Lodges And Chalets
Lodges and chalets are similar holiday or leisure homes, frequently sharing pitches on the same holiday parks as static caravans.
To all intents and purposes, therefore, holiday lodge insurance serves the same purpose as mobile home insurance and leisure holiday home insurance in safeguarding the structure and its contents and providing indemnity against public liability claims.
Park Homes
Holiday caravan insurance and lodge insurance may be distinguished from a further category of mobile home insurance, however, when it comes to mobile homes that you may live in on a permanent basis throughout the year.
Park home insurance therefore recognises the different residential use of such permanent homes and the somewhat higher standards to which they are typically built.
Holiday Home Insurance
In this way, purpose designed holiday home insurance is suitable for a mobile home which you use only for holidays.
Omar Park and Leisure Homes points out that modern static caravans for holiday use are these days built to the same exacting standards (BS3632) as park homes, but also recognises that many of those in continued use were built only to EN1647 standards.
The potentially lower build quality and lack of the insulation standards maintained by BS3632 are considerations reflected in the cover provided by holiday home insurance.
Holiday caravan insurance also recognises the fact that these static caravans are just that – mobile homes used for holidays and temporary stays only. Any lease agreement for the plot on which your holiday home sits is almost certain to have a clause limiting your residence to a maximum of 11 months in any one year.
Your frequent absences from the leisure caravan, lodge or chalet, and the fact that it may often be left empty and unoccupied is further reflected in the fact that such static home insurance typically becomes limited in its scope, or may lapse altogether, once it has been left vacant for longer than seven consecutive days.
