By Philip Murray

THE CARAVAN park licensing procedure for Angus may soon come under review, amid growing fears over trailer park “villages” in the county.

Councillors have voiced a number of concerns in the past year about what they believe is a “creep” towards permanent-residence caravans over the traditional holiday-let variety.

With house prices still at unprecedented heights, despite a recent slump in the market, some caravan sites have toyed with turning their temporary lets into permanent all-year round “housing” to cash in on a growing demand for cheap second homes or retirement cottages.

However, the prospect of thousands of new homes, and with them a surge in population into areas whose infrastructure may not be able to cope, has led to growing concerns for many councillors in Angus over what they see as the failings of the existing licensing regime.

They fear that legislation does not place enough conditions on sites to deter the switch to permanent lets, and that a number of parks have crept towards a new life as dormitory “towns” in recent years—first by successfully applying for an all-year operating licence and larger capacity, before later proposing the transformation of some or all of their static stock into use as permanent residences.

A council meeting earlier this week gave the strongest indication yet that a licensing review may not be far off, as councillors look to close the door on what they view as house building by stealth.

The matter came to a head during a report to the council’s civic licensing committee on Tuesday, which outlined a request by Downs Caravan Park in Barry to increase its capacity from 40 to 100 holiday lets.

While a number of councillors were keen to stress that there was no reason to believe that the Barry site was looking to follow the same route towards permanent-use plots taken by other parks, it served to remind many on the committee of the difficulties faced in the past with other applications.

This led to calls for an overview of the situation, as well as guidelines for use in tackling the problem as a whole, rather than dealing with each application individually.

“Could we emphasise a condition that the new plots be holiday properties only, as I am concerned about the creeping growth from holiday caravans to residential ones and would not wish to see this site slowly turn into residential use,” said Councillor Alex King.

“If it did it would mean an extra 60 homes in the Carnoustie area when that just wouldn’t be suitable.”

Councillor Bob Spink echoed similar fears. “I have to express my ongoing concern with caravan sites which started in much the same way as this.”

Concerns about the rise of caravan towns in Angus were also raised by councillors Jim Millar and Helen Oswald.

This gave rise to talk of a possible review.

“I would seem to have opened a can of worms here,” said Mr King.

“Could we maybe say that we grant the site’s application as suggested but that we bring back a review of caravan licences in Angus so we can get an overview.

“The problem has been that we’ve only ever dealt with solutions to each application when we should have an overview of others.

“If I could point out that we’ve been through (reviews) like this before.

“It was back in the days of the district council but we have gone through it in the past and maybe in terms of caravan sites it is time we did again,” he said.

There was widespread approval for the possibility of a review into caravan licensing, although no time scale or target date was set at the meeting.

Meanwhile, the Downs Caravan Park application was passed without modification after a vote.

Mrs Oswald had earlier put forward an amendment stipulating that a register be kept of addresses of all holidaymakers staying at the park to ensure that no one sets up home in one of the static caravans.

However, that was defeated by six votes to five and the proposal to increase capacity to 100 passed unaltered.