'Peaceful caravan park will be ruined by 670 Sizewell workers'

Caravan owners said a "peaceful" holiday park would be "destroyed" if hundreds of workers constructing a nearby nuclear power plant were accommodated at the site.

The Cakes and Ale Holiday Park, near Leiston, Suffolk, opened in 1968 and is a destination for families and holidaymakers from across the UK.

In 2023 the 45-acre site was purchased by the Harrison Leisure Group for £8m, which last year started allowing contractors who were building Sizewell C to stay at the park.

The company said it now wanted to reconfigure parts of the site to accommodate up to 670 workers and reverse the financial impact of poor caravan sales.

In a planning application submitted to East Suffolk Council, the company has sought permission to establish 109 lodges on the site that could each house four workers.

It also wanted to repurpose 193 of its current static caravans, with each of them able to accommodate up to two workers, and increase the park's car parking capacity.

The proposals have been criticised by people who own caravans at the site, which under the new plans could also be renamed the Leiston Resort.

Claire Byford, from Southend on Sea, Essex, bought a caravan at the park eight years ago for just over £12,000.

The 49-year-old, who told the BBC there had been a "mass exodus" of caravan owners in the past year, visits the park annually with her husband and 15-year-old daughter.

"Our direct neighbour on the park is a Sizewell worker, and he's a really lovely man. But the basis of what the park is has completely changed," she said.

"We just wanted the peaceful, relaxing Suffolk loveliness, but that has been ripped from us and we don't have any of that anymore, it's such a sad change.

"If the application goes through we'd have no option but to leave - it'll be like being in busy Southend, not the peaceful, tranquil place we've chosen to go to for eight years."

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"Ultimately, if they'd wanted to keep it as part-holiday home and part-Sizewell, there is the capacity to do that, but they're just not interested in doing that," added Byford.

"It's very clear the fees we pay are minimal to what a Sizewell resident can pay - they are profiteering and don't care that it will be the end of holidaymaking for all of us."

Louise Williams, 61, a teacher from Kingsbury, Warwickshire, purchased her static caravan at the park for £38,000 in 2013 using money she inherited following the death of her dad.

Over the years, her family have spent the school holidays at the park, but she said it was no longer a "well-run, lovely family space".

"I'm an advocate of Sizewell C - we've visited it, did the tour, and I totally understand the need for it and for workers' accommodation.

"I understand they've got to go somewhere and got to work somewhere, but it's a family park and it has destroyed the whole nature of the park. I'm very upset about it," she said.

She added: "At the end of the day [the park are] saying they want to keep their residents, but I don't know whether they do.

"It's devastated us because we thought we'd have that home there for another 20 years and this need not have happened. But it's just about money, isn't it?"

Sizewell C is a new £38bn two-reactor nuclear power station, which is expected to be operational in the mid-to-late 2030s.

It will reportedly power the equivalent of about six million homes and generate electricity for 60 years.

At the construction's height, the project is estimated to need 7,900 workers, with about 2,600 being employed from the local area.

Michael North, from Harrison Leisure Group, said Sizewell had "not created some financial windfall for Cakes and Ale" and it was unfair to accuse the company of profiteering.

Other than "dramatically increasing" site fees for caravan owners, the firm had no other "realistic alternative" to housing workers to raise funds, he added.

Harrison Leisure Group told the BBC it had invested "significantly" in the park since 2023 and had no choice but to diversify its customer base, as it has not sold a caravan in the last two years and has seen caravan owners drop from 200 to 60-70.

It estimated this equated to a loss of £3m in revenue per year and, therefore, changes had to be made to make the park "financially sustainable".

"The decision to accommodate Sizewell workers was not something that happened in isolation," North said.

"Complaints were made to the council regarding the accommodation of Sizewell workers, which ultimately required us to submit a planning application."

Sizewell C previously told the BBC the Cakes and Ale Holiday Park was not part of its accommodation plans and it had no control over the decisions made by its owners.

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