Caravan owners in Southwold have called for safeguards to be put in place to protect them from any future sale of their harbour site.

The Southwold Caravan Owners Association (SCOA) was responding to a consultation on an application for a harbour revision order (HRO) by East Suffolk Council, which owns and manages Southwold Harbour.

Under the HRO, the council is seeking to ring fence profits from the caravan site so the money can be used to pay for vital harbour repairs, including £11million on the south wall.

A spokesperson for the council said they were "committed to protecting the future of Southwold Harbour". 

READ MORE: Caravan owners at Southwold unhappy with East Suffolk plans

This proposed HRO aims to modernise and consolidate the statutory harbour powers applying to Southwold Harbour and define the composition of the Harbour Management Committee (HMC) responsible for running it.

Additionally, the HRO provides the council with the power to borrow, establish a reserve fund, "develop and dispose of" land and grant tenancies.

However, SCOA chair Diane Perry-Yates was concerned this power did not put enough "safeguards" in place to prevent the potential future sale of the caravan site.

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She wanted a requirement to be put into the HRO that the HMC needed to prove that the harbour was not generating sufficient revenue before any decision was made to sell the caravan site.

"If the harbour was thinking about selling the land then they need to show where the income is coming from in the future," she said.

"They need to show that the harbour is no longer producing the income and they would then have the freedom to sell the land."

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In April, this newspaper revealed how caravan owners at the Southwold harbour and static caravan site felt "marginalised" and "angry" after plans were unveiled to revitalise the site.

The council's Southwold Harbour Vision 2035 and Static Caravan Site Revitalisation Project aims to invest in the harbour and caravan site to improve the "degrading" infrastructure and bring in more revenue from the caravan plots to help support the harbour.

However, the caravan owners were concerned about four options being proposed to bring in more revenue for the site, which included continuing with the current licence model, changing to a 20-year lease, adopting a mixed leasing and renting model, or opting for "dynamic renting" focused on short term lets.

Ms Perry-Yates said there was particular concern among the 200 or 300 caravan owners that they would be "displaced", while the 20-year lease would be too long for some of the owners due to their age.

An East Suffolk Council spokesperson said: “The Harbour Revision Order (HRO) was developed in close collaboration with Harbour Stakeholders. During those discussions several safeguards and protections around the sale of land were proposed. East Suffolk Council adopted all of them in the draft HRO.

“All of the protections of the previous 1933 Harbour Order were adopted by the new HRO – and additional protections were put in place, such as statutory consultation with the Southwold Advisory Group, which would itself be put on a statutory footing.

“We are committed to protecting the future of Southwold Harbour, ensuring that we operate in the best interests of Southwold, the local community and businesses and the HRO sets that out in law.”