Big Local purchased a Holiday Home on Thorpe Park in Cleethorpes to provide an opportunity for affordable holidays for local families who might otherwise miss out
When: purchased 2020. Sold 2023.
Partners: Thorpe Park. Capacity Buildings Ltd.
As part of the Big Local North Cleethorpes vision for North Cleethorpes to “Better Develop Local Facilities and Amenity Land for Culture, Leisure and Recreation”, the committee agreed to invest in two standalone projects – one being a Holiday Home for local residents to benefit from and the other being the Red Shed at 82 Grimsby Road.
The idea behind the holiday home project was to be able to offer residents in the North Cleethorpes area the opportunity to experience a seaside holiday on their doorstep for those who may never have had a holiday or may not be able to afford one.
In March 2020 Big Local North Cleethorpes negotiated a good deal with Thorpe Park in Cleethorpes for our holiday home, but sadly later that month the holiday park was closed due to COVID removing the chance for families to use the home that year.
As soon as the lockdown restrictions were lifted and when the holiday park re-opened, we promoted and let the holiday home via the Thorpe Park lettings service to ensure we generated enough income from commercial lettings to cover our running costs and to fund our residents’ holidays.
Over three years we were able to successfully support 12 families to enjoy short-break holidays at Thorpe Park Cleethorpes and we received some wonderful feedback about what wonderful experiences our residents enjoyed especially after the awful impact of COVID on our community.
At this point we reviewed the project and made the decision to sell the holiday home. This was a financial decision largely due to the site fees and running costs increasing and cost of refurbishment exceeding the income we could generate.
This approach linked to our aspiration to create a self-sufficient, vibrant community hub, and meeting place at 82 Grimsby Road for our residents to benefit from. We also invited families who enjoyed a short break in the holiday home to join in our hub activities, creative endeavour and find out about other support services. Operating surpluses generated by the holiday home over three years were invested to ensure the sustainability of the hub at 82 Grimsby Road.
Some comments from families using the Holiday Home
I just wanted to say thank you so much for this weekend, we had an amazing time! Just what we needed! Thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a lovely thing that you are doing and allowing families to have holidays that they might not be able to afford without your help.
The holiday home is gorgeous ! I’m totally overwhelmed with it to be honest. Thank you so much again Big Local
