The trend for staycations has led to fears that an oversupply of glamping pods, shepherd huts and caravans could blight some of Britain’s most popular beauty spots.
Councils and national parks in Yorkshire have received about 100 planning applications since the start of the pandemic for pods, huts, log cabins or extensions to existing holiday parks, according to The Yorkshire Post.
“I think we are in danger of oversupply and it could detract from what attracts people into the county,” Gareth Dadd, the deputy leader of North Yorkshire county council, said.
Permission has just been granted for a glamping destination next to the ruins of the 12th-century monastery Byland Abbey. Plans have also been submitted for 12 bell tents in the garden of the Byland Abbey Inn, in the North York Moors National Park. Sir Nigel Forbes Adam, a former regional National Trust chairman, was among those opposing the plans.
He wrote in a letter of objection: “The question that all concerned should ask themselves is why? Confronted by a pleasant grass field you do not have to do anything.”
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In Carlton Miniott, Hambleton, local politicians have warned that plans to double a holiday park would mean that tourists would outnumber locals two to one.
Mike Nickson, a councillor, was concerned about the scale of the development and the “effects on the local countryside”, which he feared would be “very intrusive”.
It was also hard, he said, to predict how many people would continue to holiday at home in the future.
“I suspect that as soon as overseas holidays become normal again then the status quo will be re-established and people will go where the warm weather is,” he said.
The Yorkshire Dales National Park has approved “a number of planning applications for small developments of shepherd huts and pods on farms over recent months”. The park said this was not out of the ordinary.
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Neil Heseltine, a farmer and chair of the park authority, said that balance was “critical”.
He added that a larger and more diverse pool of visitors was welcome and that the challenge was to ensure they kept returning.
“If we start looking at that from an environmental perspective, that has got to be better than jetting off round the world,” he said.
Meanwhile residents of Paythorne, Ribble Valley, in Lancashire, have pledged to fight “tooth and nail” to prevent a caravan park from expanding.
The owners, Park Leisure, want to increase from 325 to 420 pitches, citing “intensified” demand due to the pandemic. Deborah Smith, 55, who has lived in the area for three years, said there were 25 pitches sitting empty.
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“They are creating an area that may never be sold and yet they are going to completely damage our village,” she said.
New regulations during the pandemic increasing the amount of time that temporary sites can operate without planning permission have proved particularly successful in the Lake District. They have allowed the national park to more than double parking capacity for the summer season, while more provision for camper vans and tents has helped to limit illegal wild camping.
Tim Farron, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, has welcomed this, particularly in light of concerns over rented properties being changed into holiday accommodation.
“We’re seeing an extensive homelessness problem emerging in the lakes with people kicked out of long-term private lets because some landlord has seen the opportunity to cash in and charge five times more in the period of a month through AirBnb,” he said.
However, he added: “If it was agricultural land beforehand, the danger is that we’ve given the developer a foot in the door to then change it from tourism use to an executive housing estate, or something like that.”