Northampton holiday park owners criticised for having 'no gas supplies' for a month and a 'bad attitude' towards residents

A resident at a busy caravan park in Northampton has criticised the site owners for the lack of gas supplies for thousands of tenants over the Christmas period.

The resident at Billing Aquadrome, who wishes to remain anonymous due to fears of reprisals, has slammed the park owners, Royale Resorts.

The woman said: "People have been waiting for gas since mid-December. It's not good.

"The people Royale Resort gets it from in Northampton, I contacted them and they said they have lots of gas.

"Because there is no gas everyone has gone out and bought electric heaters, which has caused the park to have power cuts.

"The park is now saying we shouldn't use electric heaters because it's tripping the electric.

"We had a power cut on New Year's Day. I remember watching the darts and it went off eight times."

A Royale Resorts spokeswoman told Chron and Echo on Monday (January 9): "Recent shortages have been due to national demand, but we would like to state that the site has since had a delivery."

Residents at Billing Aquadrome are supposed to vacate the site between January 6 until February 1 because it is a holiday park. However, the resident said that is not the case this year.

She said: "Royale Resorts has told us we can stay here this year for the whole 12 months or we can go home."

Chronicle and Echo asked Royale Resorts if this was true. Royale Resorts responded saying: "The resort comes with an 11-month license in which all owners will need to have a second address in order to purchase."

The anonymous resident went on to criticise Royale Resorts' attitude towards its tenants since the owners took over in 2021.

She said: "There's always something with Royale Resorts. They've put our site fees up. Their attitude is, 'if you don't like it you can go back to your residential house'. Not everyone has got a residential house.

"I don't trust them. There's a fear. Watchdog near to come here. It's so bad. People are leaving in their droves, they've had enough."

Royale Resorts responded saying: "Although we have been protecting holiday home owners from increasing site fees for the last two years, we have now had to increase ours by 10%. However, the national RPI is actually 14%.

"We welcome any concerns or enquiries and pride ourselves on having a transparent and open line of conversation with all holiday home owners."

In other recent news about Billing Aquadrome, plans were submitted by Royale Resorts to potentially add more than 1,000 caravans to its site.

There is currently a cap of 1,755 static caravans on 212 acres of land at the site but there is still 64.2 acres remaining without a cap, according to plans.

The company believes it can fit 3,039 static caravans on its nearly 295 acre site and would like confirmation of that from WNC “for the purposes of valuation”.

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