How a campsite is helping a community-owned pub thrive

Wildflower garden and pond

When the community took over The Black Lion pub, it already had planning permission for a caravan site, and we had always planned to use the caravan site as an income stream to supplement the pub income.

There is around 0.8 acres of land with the pub, however, as it had stood empty for some time, this was quite derelict and needed a lot of attention. We set about a landscaping project, with the vision of creating a more multifunctional use for this land – some for the pub, some to create a wildlife area, with the caravan pitches integrated into this.

Fortunately, an outbuilding by the pub also had an existing shower and toilet, however much like the land, these were in need of some TLC, as well as needing to add facilities for chemical and grey waste. We are lucky and have a vast range of skills and experience across our volunteer team so we could pull together to get the site looking great and ready to welcome guests!

My husband and I have a touring caravan, so we had a good idea of what makes a good campsite experience for guests. However, we worked together with North Yorkshire Council on the regulations and legal requirements, and understanding what was required in terms of risk assessments. It helped to have this information early on in our works, so we could plan ahead and not need to redo anything when it came to the council’s final sign off.

Great. We were surprised by how quickly we were up and running once we’d uploaded our listing to Pitchup.com – we received bookings in the first 24 hours which was terrifying – but spurred us on to get the finishing touches sorted! I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how smoothly it has been welcoming people on site, we like to send a lot of pre-arrival information with directions, local tips etc to help people feel welcome too.

Pitch with rural views

We have found that customers are very happy with our ‘self-service’ approach, as we are not always on-site and the pub isn’t open 24/7. However, when the pub is open, our guests love it. We offer food and pub quizzes, so some guests don’t even leave the site once they’ve arrived and set-up.

Having the campsite has brought new people into our community, visitors mingling with the locals in the pub has brought a different dynamic, which has been a lot of fun. On a particularly busy evening, one of our campers who herself has a pub, even volunteered to help behind the bar!

View of the pitches

The positives have been great – the campsite provides a high margin income stream at very low cost to our community organisation. It supplements the income to the pub, and we also rent around half the pub space to a local cafe, which the campers have loved. This means the campsite is supporting other local businesses too.

Beyond the financials, this project has really brought the community in our village together and I’ve made friends for life!

It was a learning curve getting used to the booking systems and planning pitches at first, but that passed quickly once we got the hang of it, and it is great that it is largely automated.

Get your ducks in a row! Unfortunately for our community organisation, when we took ownership of The Black Lion, the planning permission for the caravan site had lapsed, which caused delays as we needed to reapply.

I would advise those thinking about applying for planning to get input from the council early on what is required in terms of layout, facilities and fire regulations. That way, when the council visits to sign off your site, there shouldn’t be any surprises and you will avoid undoing any of your hard work!

Article by Holly Bland, Accessibility & Sustainability Project Manager at Pitchup.com