'HUTS' AND'HUTTERS' INSCOTLAND

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CONTENTS

1 THE BACKGROUND 1

2 LOCATION OF SITES 2

3 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF SITES 6

4 SITE CHARACTERISTICS 8

5 HUT CHARACTERISTICS 11

6 HUT OCCUPIERS 14

6 STATIC AND CHANGING SITE OWNERSHIP 15

8 SITE MANAGEMENT 17

9 COSTS 22

10 HUT OWNERSHIP 24

11 PATTERNS OF HUT USE 26

12 THE PROS AND CONS OF HAVING A HUT 28

13 CONCLUSIONS 31

APPENDIX A - HOW THE STUDY WAS CARRIED OUT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to many people for their contributions to the study. Staff in theplanning departments of the Scottish local authorities proved very helpful intheir responses to requests for information about the location and nature ofsites, even though this was a subject about which there seemed to be sparsebasic data. In many cases they also provided useful supplementary materialand sometimes pointers to additional or alternative sources. Likewise, theAssessors in the Valuation Boards made a major contribution through theirsearches of rating rolls to try to identify sites and huts and provided data whichnot only helped to build up a site inventory but also, through listings ofoccupiers, enabled the second and more detailed part of the study to go ahead.Individual thanks are also due to Marcus Mackenzie of the Registers of Scotlandfor his help in trying to identify the ownership of a number of rather obscuresites.

Particular thanks go to the site owners and their representatives who wereprepared to spend time to discuss at length the background to their sites andsometimes their uncertainties for the sites’ future. A number of them clearlyregarded initial approaches for a meeting with some uncertainty, or evensuspicion but, once the meetings took place, all proved to be not just informativebut interested, friendly and helpful. In return for all their help it is hoped thatthis report can allay some of their concerns about the study’s purpose.

Last, but by no means least, thanks go to the hut occupiers for responding tothe postal survey. Again, many may have had doubts about its role but theyprovided a significant cross section of experience and contributed many valuablecomments on the benefits and disadvantages of hut ownership. Without theirhelp this study could not have been undertaken effectively

RCSMay 2000

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1 THE BACKGROUND

The background

1.1 In the late 1990s, difficulties anddisagreements between owner and occupiers ona hut site at Carbeth, the most extensive site inScotland, were being extensively reported in themedia and through the courts. While hut sites wereknown to exist in other parts of Scotland therewas little or no systematic information aboutthem, about their history, how they operated andabout their current role. In 1999 the ScottishExecutive Development Departmentcommissioned a study of ‘Huts and Hutters inScotland’ to provide that comprehensive andsystematic picture. This report summarises thefindings of the study.

The approach

1.2 The study comprised two main stages. Thefirst was to establish how many hut sites therewere in Scotland, their locations and size andsome basic information about them. The secondinvolved discussions with site owners and aquestionnaire survey of hut occupiers to exploreaspects of huts and hutting in greater depth.Aspects included the nature of sites and hutsthemselves, patterns of their use through the yearand over time and, finally, the ways in which sitesoperate in terms of agreements between ownerand occupier, rents and various conditions. Detailsof the methods used for the study can be found inAppendix A.

Terminology

1.3 The following broad definitions wereadopted at the outset, for use when seekinginformation, whether from official sources suchas local planning departments or Valuation Boardsor from site owners and occupiers :

‘The origin of huts is very uncertain. Itappears that in some cases, for exampleduring and after the two World Wars, some

Scottish landowners made land available onlease on which ex-servicemen and other townand city dwellers were allowed to erectdwellings at their own cost, primarily to enjoythe benefits of the countryside and fresh airfor holidays and at weekends. Such dwellingswere generally of modest timber constructionand, over the years, generically the name“huts” has been applied to them.

‘Generally sites comprise a number ofdwellings within a specific area of land,though in some cases they may be found assmall clusters, or two or three dwellings overa more widely dispersed area(NB this definition excludes beach huts andchalets used for holiday letting, huts onallotments, caravans and mobile homes).

‘ “Hutters” occupy their plots as “tenants”or “licensees”, generally paying an annualrental for their plot, though they may ownthe actual dwellings on the land. The natureof tenancy or licence arrangements is oftenuncertain.

‘Both on account of the nature of thestructures and the extent, or lack, of servicesavailable to them, these dwellings were notintended to be used as permanent residences,though in practice some have come to be usedfor protracted periods.’

As the study progressed it became clear thatneither the term ‘huts’ not ‘hutters’ termnecessarily applies throughout Scotland.Valuation Boards refer variously in the non-domestic Rolls to ‘hut’, ‘living hut’, ‘holiday hut’or ‘chalet’. Similarly, site owners sometimesmade it clear that both they and their occupiersalways referred to their ‘chalets’, seeing ‘hut’ asa rather derogatory term. Nevertheless, forconvenience, the term ‘hut’ is retained for thestructures themselves. Although the term ‘hutters’was used in the initial definition, for simplicityand consistency ‘occupier’ is used throughoutthe report.

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2.1 At the outset, little prior information onnumbers of huts throughout Scotland wasavailable. The role of the first stage of the studywas to build up a more systematic picture. To dothis it was necessary to draw on a patchwork ofsources.

2.2 The initial approach was a written enquiryto each local planning department in Scotlandseeking information on a standardised basis aboutany hut sites known to exist within their areas. Inturn some of the responses to this pointed ustowards a second possible source, that of the localValuation Boards, whose rating rolls mightcontain information, not just on the location ofthe huts themselves but also some informationon their occupiers and even on site owners.

A complex picture

2.3 The Scottish Executive’s initial interest wasin huts - though without a minimum number beingspecified - grouped together on a site under asingle ownership and this formed the basis forthe enquiry to planning departments and to theValuation Boards.

2.4 As the study developed it became clear thatthe picture was more complex and definitionbecame a grey area. While the majority of hutsand sites fitted the original criteria, others seemedlikely to have done so in the past but their tenurehad subsequently changed, perhaps on the deathof a former landowner, and individual plots hadbeen sold to their occupiers. Yet others mayalways have been in individual ownership andhere sometimes the source data was unclear.

2.5 Nine local authority planning departmentsidentified one or more sites within their areas. Afurther two had no comprehensive record of sitesfrom which to make a return.

2.6 The limited information even from thoseCouncils recording sites may be a function of thegenerally low key presence of sites. PlanningDepartments may not know a great deal aboutthe sites in their area because they have little

2 LOCATION OF SITES

interest in, or problems with them, a suppositionwhich appeared to be borne out in discussion.Apart from a small number of large sites, the restare generally modest in size and probably do notcause significant problems.

2.7 Information supplied by the ValuationBoard Assessors provided confirmation ormodification of these figures and helped to fillgaps. On the ground it proved possible to identifya number of properties which appeared to fit thestudy criteria, i.e. they were in distinct groupsunlike other forms of development along thatstretch of coast and their building styles generallysuggested non-permanent dwellings. SubsequentAssessor information confirmed these as groupsof ‘holiday huts’. Although a nil planning returnwas made for Dumfries and Galloway, againassessor information identified a large number of‘living huts’ (a term used by the local Assessorto describe ‘non-domestic properties used forholiday purposes but not let on a commercialbasis’). Three sizeable groupings and three smallclusters of between two and four huts could beidentified along the Solway coastal fringetogether with a number of scattered individualhuts.

2.8 Using these two sets of data as a basis forthe second stage of the study, approaches weremade to owners of the larger sites with a view toobtaining more detailed information about eachsite. These in turn led to further modification ofnumbers.

2.9 Another feature which emerged from theplanning and Valuation Board sources was theexistence of very small clusters or of individualhuts which in many ways fitted at least some ofthe criteria and as later information on site originsrevealed, these probably started in the same waybut never expanded in numbers.

2.10 Both site owners and occupiers indicatedthat in the past there had been other sites inparticular areas, such as parts of westStirlingshire, the northern Borders and the Solwaycoast, which have now disappeared completely.Closure in part seems to have been lack of interest

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and hence hut decay but also some deliberate postwar closure by local authorities, sometimes whenthey were seen as an abuse of the council housewaiting list system, with people buying a hut andthen claiming homelessness. Even two ownersof existing sites referred to past dealings with theirlocal authorities on this issue. Others, particularlyon parts of the Solway coast had been redevelopedas more up-market ‘holiday villages’.

2.11 As part of what may be a transitionalprocess elsewhere, one group on the Ayrshirecoast which were said possibly to fit the criteriahad now become a row of fairly conventionaldwellings, still in some cases with a broadly ‘hut’or ‘chalet’ appearance and were now individuallyowned and on the Council Tax roll, thoughpossibly only in use as ‘second homes’. Despitethis is seems likely that this group probably startedas a form of hut site. Other groups of coastaldwellings likewise may have started in this waybut became more permanent a longer time ago.

2.12 Finally, at least one site identified in theearly stages of the study proved to have died anatural death within the past few years, thoughstill visible on the ground as an overgrown fieldwith one or two derelict huts on it. Nevertheless,another extant site looks little different and couldbe on a similar downward path though still justfunctioning.

Hut sites throughout Scotland

2.13 Given the uncertainty of some sourcematerial and modifications to numbers as thestudy developed, reaching a definitive figure ofsites and huts in Scotland is difficult.Nevertheless, by drawing the sources together itis possible to reach a ‘best guess’ estimate.

2.14 Including all types of site, both those withinthe strict definition at the start of the study, thoseon which individual plots of land are owned ratherthan under a single site ownership and also thevery small clusters of huts, the most likely totalsfor Scotland are of 37 sites, of which 27 arethought to be conventional ‘rented sites’ and therest ‘owned sites’. The total number of huts isestimated at c630 , of which c540 are on ‘rentedsites’.

2.15 The spread of hut sites across Scotland islargely in a band from the Angus coast to theClyde coast, with extensions into East Lothianand the northern Borders on the east and south tothe Solway coast in the West. Map 1 shows thegeneral locations of all sites with two or morehuts. Coastal sites have been important in Angusand along the Clyde Ayrshire and Dumfries andGalloway coasts, together the one East Lothiansite. Otherwise sites have been in fairly closeproximity to major urban centres, primarilyGlasgow but also to a lesser extent Dundee andEdinburgh. Table 1 summarises the distributionby local authority area.

2.16 Table 2 summarises the spread of hut sitesin terms of their size within a number of broadgroupings. In addition to the total of c630 hutsin groups of two or more, there are a number ofindividual huts, though these are probably theleast certain given the nature of the source datasince they are variously described as huts, livinghuts and chalets. However, other categories suchas fishing huts, climbing huts, bothies etc. havebeen excluded since they seem to fall into adifferent category of use. An allowance of c30has been made for these though inevitably thismust be a very generalised figure.

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Table 2 - Hut sites by size (approximate numbers of huts)

Rented sites Owned sites All sites

Very large sites (>150 huts) 1 1Large sites (c50 huts) 2 2Medium sites (c 20-30 huts) 4 1 5Smaller sites (c 10-20 huts) 8 3 11Small groups (c2-9 huts) 12 6 18

TOTAL 27 10 37

Table 1 - Hut sites and huts across Scotland

Rented sites Owned sites All sites

Huts Sites Huts Sites Huts Sites

Stirling 188 2 14 1 202 3Scottish Borders 107 3 0 0 107 3Angus 93 7 13 1 106 8Dumfries & Galloway 30 4 27 2 57 6South Ayrshire 16 1 17 3 33 4Perth & Kinross 22 2 8 2 30 4Argyll & Bute 17 2 12 1 29 3East Lothian 24 1 0 0 24 1Inverclyde 14 2 0 0 14 2North Ayrshire 11 1 0 0 11 1Renfrewshire 9 1 0 0 9 1Aberdeenshire 7 1 0 0 7 1

TOTAL 538 27 91 10 629 37

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3 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF SITES

initially to come from the city’s mining fringes.The size to which a site grew was probably onlygoverned by the area of land that a particularowner had available for this kind of purpose andhis willingness to let it grow beyond what he sawas manageable bounds.

3.6 In part site growth in the 1930s may havecoincided with increasing interest among urbandwellers in getting out into the countryside, ideasof healthy living and, as proved the case with afew sites, the development of cycling clubslooking for a overnight or weekend base aconvenient distance from the city. Access to ruralareas may also have begun to improve at that timewith an increasing network of rural bus services.In some instances people had been coming forsome years, at the time of summer trades holidays,to localities where hut sites subsequentlydeveloped, but until then had been camping infields on or near the sites. This form of originwas referred to particularly in relation to sites nearboth the Ayrshire and Angus coasts. Occasionallya site grew to serve a more localised demand.

3.7 Carbeth appears to have been the earliestsite. Here, the then owner of the small estate hadno plans to set up a site as such, although he hadallowed some summer camping on his land. Someconsequent health and hygiene problems led oneor two of the campers seeking permission to putup huts. After initially refusing requests,eventually the first two huts were allowed to goahead for which a nominal plot rent was charged.This site grew fairly slowly but with a moresignificant increase during World War II whenits location was seen as convenient as somewhereto house people made homeless as a result of theClydeside bombing.

3.8 Only on two sites does there seem to havebeen some form of ‘conscious development’,though in each the purposes were rather different.One, in East Lothian, was a small farm, possiblyalready with a few huts, which was sold to thelocal council in the 1930s. Initially intended as asite for houses the council then allowed individualplots to be rented out for huts to be built, in part

3.1 Received wisdom was that hut sites hadbeen deliberately established in the 1920s,probably by landowners making land availableon which ex-servicemen and families fromdeprived inner city areas could erect dwellings attheir own cost. By so doing they could enjoy thebenefits of the countryside and fresh air forholidays and at weekends. They were not intendedfor permanent residence, generally being ofmodest construction with few, if any servicesavailable.

3.2 Local planning departments generallyproved to have little or no recorded knowledgeof when sites were originally established. Inreality, site owners revealed that in most instancesit was the occupiers themselves who were theinstigators of development.

3.3 Only one or two sites can be identified asstarting as early as thought. The earliest hutsappear to have been built in 1919 and in 1925respectively. Most sites started in the 1930s witha few soon after World War II. None seemed tohave started after this time, possibly reflectingincreasing planning control of land use.

3.4 Given that early owners are now longdeparted, information on origin and growth overtime inevitably is vague and anecdotal. Except inrare cases, sites were not consciously ‘set up’ byindividual landowners. Rather, they happened toown the piece of land at that time and initiallymerely responded to an individual request, mostlyfrom city dwellers, to be allowed to put up, orperhaps bring to it, some form of weekend orholiday dwelling.

3.5 The pace at which individual sites grewvaried but essentially was demand responsive.Once the first occupier had been allowed somespace and built a hut he probably told his friendsand relatives who then decided they wanted onetoo. This accounts for the tendency for each siteto have drawn from particular areas, rather thana haphazard spread. In this way there were‘Glasgow’ sites, ‘Dundee’ sites, ‘Aberdeen’ sitesand even ‘Edinburgh’ sites, though last tended

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by the study is one about which even now verylittle seems to be known, even by the landowners.Here, perhaps ‘site’ is a misnomer since it is justa cluster of huts on the Clyde foreshore. Whilethe landowner has been aware of the presenceof the site for some thirty years little is knownof its origin other than it may have grown upjust after the war, possibly involving theremnants of wartime defence structures. With noformal arrangement between estate andoccupiers, no rent and little involvement fromlocal authority departments, it just appear to be‘there’, though no-one quite knows why, and isaccepted.

seen as encouraging tourism and particularlyserving people from mining communities inEdinburgh and Midlothian. Here, as on oneBorder sites, early hut structures includedoccasional former railway carriages, subsequentlyconverted into longer term dwellings. The othermore conscious decision to provide a site wasagain an effect of World War II where an estateowner near Loch Lomond provided land andmaterials specifically for huts to be built to meetthe needs of a small number of families affectedby air raid damage in Clydebank.

3.9 Finally among the variety of sites revealed

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4 SITE CHARACTERISTICS

Site settings and forms

4.1 Sites are located in diverse settings. A feware on flat land, laid out in a fairly orderly way.Others are more scattered amongst scrub orwoodland, sometimes in hilly and remotelocations. A few are coastal, sometimes clingingto a shoreline. While the planning enquiryprovided some site descriptions these gave onlya limited impression of the real nature of sites.Visits at the time of the discussions with siteowners give a much better picture and a varietyof examples are shown in the illustrations to thisreport.

4.2 At one time there were three very large siteswith between 100 and 200 huts but these wereunusual. A few other sites had around 50 but manyare quite small. With one or two exceptions theyseem to have reached their maximum size withina relatively small number of years from their startdate and then mostly stayed at that level untilperhaps 10 or 20 years ago. Subsequent declinein numbers and general condition has beenvariable. Owners rarely admit to deliberatelyreducing numbers, though there has beenoccasional ‘clearing out’ of problem occupiers.Reduction is attributed more to loss of interestby individual occupiers, through age or othercircumstances, leading to infrequent use andincreasing dilapidation until either the site ownertells them they must improve it or leave, in whichcase they often choose the latter. In bothcircumstances the hut’s value has usually declinedso much that the occupier can cut his or her losseswith no qualms. On a few sites decreasingnumbers of huts have be associated with changeof use of parts of the land.

4.3 The space occupied by hut sites is also veryvariable. Some are compact and tucked away,others much more spread out. Often the hutsthemselves occupy indeterminate patches of landwith no clear boundaries and it is unlikely thatthe landowners ever thought about a specific areafor their ‘sites’. Natural boundaries of an availablefield or other piece of land were the normaldeterminants and as there were more requests to

be allowed to put up huts the available area wasfilled.

4.4 Occupiers’ responses suggest that almostthree-quarters of huts on their sites are either‘scattered over a larger area’ or ‘grouped looselywithin a small area’. Only about one in five wereseen to be in some form of orderly layout. Twothirds of occupiers said that their individual plotswere enclosed in some way but clearly there isno set pattern across or within sites in the way inwhich the area of land on which a hut sits isdefined.

Access

4.5 Another important feature of hut sites, andeven more the individual huts, is how you getaccess to them. Most sites are in rural areas, oftenfairly remote. The nature of the access to sitesand to individual huts within them depends partlyon location and on topography and partly on theextent to which a site owner provides at leastpartially made-up tracks. Only a few sites aredirectly adjacent to a road and even then theseare generally fairly minor roads. Most have to beapproached via farm or estate tracks of varyinglength and condition and one or two are fairlyinaccessible.

4.6 Access between huts and the nearest publicroad may be by a some form of surfaced track,though often these appear to be fairly rough.Alternatives are generally very basic.Descriptions in responses emphasised both thediversity of access and also sometimes thedifficulty it could cause. Within a site huts maybe adjacent to the access track or some distancefrom it across open, often rough groundsometimes leading to problems if occupiers usefour-wheel drive vehicles in bad weather.Individual occupiers may make efforts to upgradetheir own immediate stretch of access, eitherwithin their plot or the approach to it, though oneowner highlighted occupier attempts to createtheir own parking space at the side of the site

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track through the site damaging stone walls andfilling in drainage ditches leading to occasionalflooding.

Services

4.7 Provision of services by the owner isminimal on nearly all sites though the nature ofwhat the they perceive as ‘services’ varies. Onlytwo sites have full mains - or equivalent - services.On the one council-owned site, all huts have water,electricity and drainage to each, though water wasoriginally obtained from a communal well on thesite and occupiers had access to a nearby publictoilet block. On the other, water connection toindividual huts was not available until about tenyears ago but now huts are also connected to adrainage system running to two modern cess-pitswithin the site, a facility again only introduced inrecent years. In addition to these two sites, onesmall section within the Carbeth site has electricityand mains water/sewerage where topography andthe nearness of water mains and electricity supplyhas made this possible.

4.8 Otherwise, if site owners provide servicesthese are mostly limited to water supply, generallyvia one or more standpipes somewhere on the site.In one instance an owner has installed a centralwater storage tank for the site, fed from the farmsupply and distributed to a number of stand-pipeswithin the hut area. Not all sites rely on standpipesfor their main source of water, alternativeincluding springs or wells or even a streamrunning through or adjacent to the site.

4.9 However water is obtained, it has to bedisposed of. Again, with the exception of the oneor two serviced sites referred to above few haveany form of drainage. In most cases waste watergoes into some form of soakaway within the plot,but creating this is the responsibility of theindividual occupier. On one site a condition of alease was that an occupier should provide such asoakaway to a standard design provided by theestate.

4.10 More problematic is the disposal of toiletwaste, since most huts have some form ofchemical or dry closet. Again few site owners

make any provision and generally it is expectedthat occupiers will make their own arrangementsfor disposal. On only two sites were there anycentralised toilet facilities, but both combinedhuts with other activities such as caravan storageor a static caravan site. Individual occupiers on aBorders site have installed their own septic tanks.Elsewhere one or two owners have providedcommunal septic tanks or a cess-pit for disposalof toilet waste. Perhaps the most unusual variantis on the mutually owned coastal site in Anguswhere occupiers dispose of chemical toilet wasteinto pits dug in the sand of the beach at low waterlevel, either at night or in the early morning apractice which has existed on the site for 80 yearsand generally has been accepted as an appropriateand hygienic form of disposal.

4.11 Clearance of domestic refuse from sitespresents a potential problem but few owners seeit as their responsibility to make provision. AtCarbeth, one of the ‘services’ which it emphasisesis provided is ‘removal of rubbish (partly but notwholly undertaken by the local authorities) andthe general upkeep of the amenities’ .Occasionally there is a storage shed, an openmesh container or sometimes ‘wheelie-bins’ fromwhich refuse sacks are collected by the localcouncil. Site owner attitudes on rubbish vary, withsome paying little attention and others adoptinga strict view, insisting that occupiers must takeaway all refuse and other rubbish for disposalelsewhere. Provision of refuse bags andcollection of rubbish from hut sites by localauthorities is a common source of complaint byboth owners and occupiers, particularly asoccupiers pay rates on their huts, while ownershave had difficulties about whether councils willcollect wheelie-bins for the site users as opposedto the owner’s dwelling.

4.12 The only other form of service occasionallyprovided is that of maintaining communal areasof the site, maintenance of individual plots beingthe occupiers’ responsibility. Much depends onthe site’s area and topography and on ownerinterest, but it is very rare, mostly limited toperiodic grass cutting or additional hard-core onan access track. However, in most cases there islittle to maintain. On some sites which are justpart of a field owners regard it as theresponsibility of the occupiers to cut grass. Two

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sites show contrasting approaches tomaintenance. The first is now under communalownership of its occupiers who shareresponsibility for its upkeep, both in terms of inputof effort but also, where necessary, in contributingto upkeep costs. On the other, Carbeth, the siteowner takes a very proactive approach to creationand maintenance of access roads and thinning orplanting of trees as part of a long termdevelopment programme to benefit both the hutoccupiers and his land holding as a whole.

Changes in sites over time

4.13 Sites evolve both in scale and the generalcondition of the site itself and its huts. Both reflectoccupier interest in maintaining and developingtheir individual huts and plots and site ownersinterest in the site and its occupiers. The lattermay come with a change of ownership andpositive attempts to enhance the site and its image,though this may lead to additional costs for theoccupiers.

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5 HUT CHARACTERISTICS

5.1 While conversations with site ownersprovided some picture of the huts on their sites,the questionnaire survey of hut occupiersprovided a more structured picture of what hutswere like, in terms of age and size, the materialsof which they are made and the facilities whichthey possess. It also provided information on theways in which huts change over time and howmuch their occupiers spend on maintaining orimproving them in a typical year. The surveycovered a wide range of hut sites including, as itturned out, not just the conventional sites but alsoa number where land as well as hut were ownedby the occupiers. In practice some differencesemerged between the two groups, perhapsbecause the latter have a larger stake in theirdwelling and so may be prepared to invest it inand its plot in a different way to those on theformer. Sites are therefore referred to as ‘rented’,or ‘owned’ or to the generality of sites as ‘all’.

Hut forms

5.2 Huts are a medley of styles and sizesthough, with a few exceptions, they are fairlysmall. Some are very old, a few dating back totheir original state from the 1930s. Others arealmost completely new. The nature of individualhuts reflects preferences, practical abilities andfinancial resources of their initial occupier andhis/her successors. Excluding those where theoccupier did not know the age of the hut, one inthree were said to date from before W.W.II andtwo out of five from the 1940s and 1950s. Mostof the remainder date from the 1960s/1970s andonly a few since 1980.

5.3 There was little prior knowledge aboutwhat might constitute a hut in terms of its internaluse of space - was it literally an open hut, or moreof a small bungalow? The survey revealed mosthuts as having more than one room with somequite versatile in their accommodation. Virtuallyall have a single living room, with a number ofoccupiers emphasising that this is a fairly generalpurpose room used for cooking as well as sittingand eating. Only a few appear to have more than

one living room though there was an occasionalreference to ‘a sun-room’. Almost all huts haveat least one bedroom and more than half have twoor more. Here again, huts on owned sites are ratherbetter equipped, perhaps larger and moresubstantially built. Some huts operate on a more‘open plan’ layout with little formal demarcationbetween sitting, sleeping and cooking areas

5.4 An initial assumption about huts was thattheir origin and supposed tenure meant that theywere ‘temporary’ structures sitting on the groundwith some form of solid support, rather than beingbuilt into the ground with proper foundations asin a normal house. The survey proved thisgenerally to be the case although with somevariations, generally related to tenure. Two thirdsjust sit on some form of support blocks, mostlybrick or concrete and particularly those on rentedsites. Just over one in ten appear to haveconventional foundations and the remainder havea variety of other supports - old railway sleepersare a common form of substructure. Fullfoundations are much more common on theowned than on the rented sites, a reflection oftheir greater long-term security.

5.5 When first built, probably no long-termfuture was envisaged for the huts. Most were built,or rather put-together, by people who were largelyamateurs, possibly with building or joinery skillsor at least reasonably ‘handy’. Because of this,and the fact that they were also intended as low-cost structures, they were built of whatevermaterials were cheap or easily availableincluding, in the early days, old bus-bodies orconverted railway carriages. While most of theformer have now disappeared, occasional busframes still exist as hut substructures.

5.6 Typically huts are around 25 feet in length,16 feet in width and 10 feet high, though thesemean figures hide a diverse range of dimensions.

5.7 Hut materials are mostly various types oftimber, or sometimes tarred felt, corrugated metalor other materials. Weatherboarding or plywoodsheets are common. Much original raw materialfor huts was probably recycled from other

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purposes and acquired second hand. Morerecently, prefabricated panels or even completeprefabricated huts have sometimes been used.Occasionally more permanent materials such asbrick, concrete or stone are found as part of a hutstructure such as a chimney. Internallyplasterboard or plywood or, less often, chipboardor hardboard, are used. Floors are generally timberfloorboards, plywood or chipboard or, rarely,concrete or stone. Roofing material is mostlytarred or ‘mineralised’ felt, over woodenboarding or, less often, chipboard or plywoodthough in some cases corrugated metal or asbestoshave been used.

Services

5.8 Lifestyle in a hut seems to lie at some mid-point in a triangle between camping, a caravanand a house. Much also seems to depend on whatthe individual occupiers makes of it and the extentto which their hut is used.

5.9 Very few huts have mains electricity,though here again there are marked differencesbetween those on owned and rented sites. Morethan half the owner-occupied huts in the surveyhad mains electricity compared to only a tinyproportion of those on rented plots. One or twosites specifically prohibit any form of mainsservice supply. It is entirely up to occupiers tomake their own arrangements for lighting,cooking and heating but, site owners often hadsurprisingly little knowledge about how theiroccupiers cope. Almost half the huts with nomains electricity use bottled gas for lighting,followed by electric batteries used to power smallfluorescent lights. Small petrol generators, eitherto charge the batteries or to power the lights direct,were reported in about a quarter of the huts thoughthese can cause noise problems for neighbouringoccupiers. Traditional oil lamps remain common,in about a fifth of huts, though as many use ordepend on candles. A few huts have small windgenerators. Cooking is most often by bottled gasor occasionally paraffin stoves. Bottled gas is alsoa fairly common form of heating though somehuts have solid fuel stoves.

5.10 As with electricity, mains water is morelikely to be provided to the huts on owned plots.Very few of those on rented plots are connected

to mains water and generally are dependent eitheron access to a standpipe (in around half) or someother source of water. Other sources whichoccupiers identified included access to a springor a well while others took water from a burn orriver flowing through or along the edge of theirsite. While the first two of these may be pureenough for drinking, they and the burns are moreoften used for washing purposes rather than asdrinking water. In practice drinking water isgenerally brought from home in containers -increasingly commercial bottled water - orperhaps obtained locally from a nearby hotel orcafe. Many occupiers collect rainwater from thehut roof into large water butts or other form ofstorage tank, either inside, above or adjacent totheir hut. Mostly this is used just for washingpurposes but may be pumped into a normalkitchen sink or even to simple forms of shower.

5.11 Virtually all huts appear to have at leastsome form of toilet. In practice most of these arechemical or occasionally ‘dry’ or ‘earth’ closets.These may be either within the main hut structureor adjacent in a ‘sub-hut’. Once again it tendedto be huts on owned sites which were more likelyto have properly plumbed in facilities, while onat least one rented site occupiers were specificallyprohibited in their occupancy agreement frominstalling flush toilets. On a small number of siteshuts even appear to have full bathrooms plumbedin, including those on at least one rented site.Communal toilet facilities for a site as a whole,as often provided on caravan sites are very rareon hut sites.

The externals

5.12 As with the hut’s structure and how it isequipped inside, the extent to which the spaceoutside it is developed depends very much onoccupier abilities and preferences. It may alsodepend on whether plots are clearly defined orjust scattered on open ground. At the two extremesare the occupiers who have provided their hutswith paved outdoor sitting space, flower beds,hanging baskets and patio furniture. At the otheris the grassed patch which may be cut once ortwice a year. Between these many variants canbe found. Reference was even made in a few ofthe occupier questionnaires to the benefits ofbeing able to grow ones own produce, seen as

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5.15 All these changes cost money and, as willbe seen later in the context of the pros and consof owning a hut, the constant maintenance is themost commonly perceived disadvantage.Occupiers were asked roughly how much theywould spend in a typical year on maintaining theirhut and its immediate surroundings. About halfspent between £100 and £250, while one in fivespent less. About one in ten spent between £250and £400 while the remaining few may spendeven more.

5.16 All this suggests much busy activity andcare but inevitably some huts are now run-down,though revival of owner interest or a change ofownership might resuscitate them. Hut occupiersare responsible for the upkeep of their huts, bothin relation to their planning permission and theexpectations of the site owner, but neithernecessarily exert pressure and some occupierseither disappear or are not easily contactable.Under these circumstance site owners have eithertried to find a replacement occupier or eventuallyhave had to demolish and clear the hut.

5.17 These contrasting pictures serve toemphasise the individual nature of huts and thecharacter of their occupiers. There is perhaps agreater freedom for this kind of individuality thanthere is in other forms of housing or even othertypes of holiday home and it is much easier foran occupier to shrug off responsibility since allhe or she has lost is perhaps a tumble-down shackwith little capital value a drain on perhaps limitedresources. Here so much depends on the amountof time the occupiers wish to spend at their hutsand the purposes for which they use them. It mayalso be that the current occupier does not havethe necessary skills to even maintain, let aloneimprove, the hut.

important by some urban flat dwellers. It is oftenthese more active occupiers who probably havealso made efforts to improve the immediateaccess to their hut or perhaps provide a parkingspace for their car.

The organic nature of huts

5.13 By their nature huts need a considerabledegree of maintenance but they are also modifiedover time. A few original inter-war period hutssurvive with little outward sign of change but itis much more common for huts to have beenenlarged, reduced, rebuilt or re-clad, togetherwith internal changes and improvements.Planning permission is needed for changes andsome planning authorities prohibit completerebuild, while site owner permission may alsobe needed. For some owners, working on theirhuts, whether on maintenance or more majorchange, is a hobby in the same way that people‘tinker with cars’ or ‘mess about with boats’ andmany have been made very comfortable and‘homely’ inside.

5.14 Occupiers were asked which out of list ofpossible changes they had made to their huts overthe time they had owned them. Repainting andgeneral maintenance is clearly a fairly commonactivity done by around two thirds of alloccupiers. At the same time substantialproportions have undertaken major renewal ofcomplete parts of the hut, particularly roofs - themost vulnerable to lack of maintenance - andwalls. Overall only a quarter of huts have beenextended, particularly on owned sites, reflectinggreater security of tenure and hence the worthof investment.

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6 HUT OCCUPIERS

6.1 The picture of the hut occupiers gainedthrough this study is of a fairly elderly population,more than two out of three being aged 50 or overand with heavy emphasis towards the over 60s,particularly on owned sites. One couple evenspecified their ages as 84 and 79. Only about onein six of all occupiers was under 40, nearly all onrented sites.

6.2 It is possible to build up at least a tentativetypology of occupier households. The largestcategory, a quarter of the possible households, isthe couple aged over 60, of whom all but a veryfew now have no ‘children’ in their household -though both their children and grandchildren mayshare their interest in the huts. The next categoryis slightly younger couples in the 51-60 age band,accounting for one in five of the total, and of theseonly a third still have children at home. A similarproportion of couples are aged 41-50 and herechildren are more common. In the youngest ageband, with a respondent aged 40 or under, couplesare more common than singles, the great majorityof them with children. Just over a quarter of thehouseholds consisted of single adults rather thancouples but of these only about one in threeincluded children.

6.3 Half the respondents classed themselves as‘retired’ , particularly those on owned sites.However, a quarter were in full-time employment,more often among the rented occupiers and a fewin part-time work. The self employed and un-waged each accounted for about one in ten butmost of the former were on owned sites.

6.4 The initial supposition that huts and huttingemerged as way of providing a means of weekendand holiday escape into the country for peoplefrom poor and overcrowded urban conditions mayhave been correct. Nowadays, while much of thehut catchments remain the same in locationalterms, occupiers are very diverse in theirbackground. Here it is only possible to summarise

the types of job background from which hutterscome. Among occupiers of rented sites, mostlythose who were already retired, there were anumber of people who had been in the broadlyengineering/technical field, a group in jobsassociated with the building industry and somein broadly professional/managerial jobs.Education accounted for a few formeroccupations, together with some in transport anda couple formerly in the medical field, togetherwith a miscellaneous group of other formeroccupations

6.5 Among those in full-time employment,occupations varied. Some were in the buildingtrades and a number in industrial ormanufacturing jobs. A few each came fromprofessional/managerial jobs, from education andfrom the medical/nursing sector, while a diversegroup came from what are probably fairly lowlypaid jobs.

6.6 The picture of occupiers is slightly differenton the owned sites. Here, among the retired peoplemost had been in the professions, as were mostof those still in full or part-time employment,though the self employed were more mixed.

6.6 Site owners summarise their occupiers asmainly older and retired people, some now veryelderly and having started coming to the hut aschildren when it was first built in the 1930s andsubsequently inheriting it, using it with theirchildren and later their grandchildren. They alsooften described their occupiers as mainly fromlower income groups, often with trade or otheruseful skills in building or maintaining their huts.

6.7 Owners also identify a continuity inoccupier catchment area for their sites from thetime they started, though a few noted changes. Afew sites, particularly those on which the plotsare individually owned are less easy to classifyand draw from much further afield.

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7 STATIC AND CHANGING SITE OWNERSHIP

7.1 The original landowners of sites were a mixof small farmers, or people running smallagriculture-related businesses such as poultry orpig farms, and a few owners of larger estates. Theland which they were prepared to make availablewas generally fairly scrappy, sometimes a slopingfield of very rough pasture, occasionally an oddcorner of flatter ground near the house or farmsteading, or rougher foothill country in the glens.One or two sites are coastal and here either theland on which the huts sit was on a promontory orrough ground or, in two or three cases, virtuallyon the foreshore, the last of these raising someuncertainties over ownership rights.

7.2 Overall there is a strong degree of continuityof ownership. Sites on estates generally remain inthe same hands though management may havechanged. Some other small sites have been passedon within the same family and continue to operatebut with varying degrees of interest andinvolvement of the current generation. In a numberof cases new owners have come on to the scene.A farmer may have increased his holdingincluding an existing site or a new owner hasbought land for other purposes but let the hutscontinue in use. Only one new owner, with noawareness of huts, had bought land, as aninvestment, and found herself responsible for asite.

7.3 Contrasting degrees and styles ofinvolvement emerged within the range of ownersand it is important to give a picture of these sincethey may well have implications for thecontinuation of sites and huts in general. None ofthe owners in this survey had particularly negativeattitudes to their sites. Some were fairlyenthusiastic, others ambivalent and a few haduncertainties about the future which may haveresulted from adverse publicity about ownerscreated by the Carbeth disputes. On the other handwith one exception the site plays a very minor partin their lives, mostly just because it has been thereby default for many years or else is only ancillaryto their main way of life or business.

7.4 Carbeth is at the top end of the owner

involvement scale. Having inherited a small estatewith large numbers of huts, within the last fewyears the owner has deliberately entered withinterest and commitment into the full-timebusiness of running a large and often complexsite with a difficult history. In part this has beendone to preserve and develop the huts and theirrole to a greater extent than had been doneformerly and also because it had become anessential element within the viability and longterm preservation of the estate itself within whichhuts have to earn their keep in return forinvestment in the land and services.

7.5 At the other extreme is an owner whoinherited the running of a very small site on asmall farm started in an involuntary way by hisgrandfather. Through three generations thereseems to have been little or no direct involvementin the site which was on land virtually useless forany other purpose. No rent had been charged fromthe beginning and in return over the years theowners never saw themselves as having anyresponsibility towards the occupiers certainly interms of providing any form of services. This isnot to say that there was not a perfectly amicablerelationship between the two sides for the mostpart and in some cases occupiers would makesome kind of return to the owner in kinds, perhapsby assisting him with odd jobs on his farm whenneeded.

7.6 Between these extremes is a range of othercontrasting approaches. Small sites on largeestates may have been in continuous ownershipover generations with little direct ownerinvolvement. Rents may be low but minimalservices are provided and most occupiers areknown to the owner who in turn feels a degree ofresponsibility to the occupiers provided theyrespect his position in return. Similar, but perhapsless paternalistic, attitudes apply on some farmsites inherited by their present owners fromparents who started the site. Again little isprovided by the owner and administration, rentsand involvement are minimal but occupiersindicate that such sites are actively used and somepraise their site owners. Smaller privately owned

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sites may have an owner living adjacent andkeeping a ‘motherly eye’ on them. Differentvalues sometimes apply when outsiders come inand acquire an on-going site, sometimes with anancillary land use. Again relationships may beeasy with little or no paperwork and few imposedconditions and constraints. At the same time thefew younger new owners may take a morecommercial view, with the site seen as somethingwhich they are prepared to accept but possiblywould rather be without.

7.7 What is perhaps the main feature of mostof these apparently attitudes is that of beneficialinterest and building up a degree of mutualtoleration and, even better, respect. Where thishappens there seem to be few managementproblems as evidenced by the absence ofknowledge about quite what an owner could doto remove a difficult tenant, largely because it hadnever arisen.

7.8 On nearly all these sites the rent levels havebeen fairly low and, perhaps more important,there have rarely been significant changes in theway the site has operated or major jumps in rent.On the few sites that have increased rentsignificantly perhaps not surprisingly there hasgenerally been an initial negative reaction from aminority of occupiers, largely because they mayhave ‘had it too good’ for too long and have builtup unrealistic expectations. Despite this it hasproved possible to make increases and for themeventually to be accepted provided the occupiersare aware of why they are necessary and whatthe longer term benefits are to them.

7.9 Overall, good relationships between thetwo sides and fairly uncomplicated managementarrangements seem to be a key, but at the sametime they can leave both sides with a degree ofvulnerability in the event that things go wrong.

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8 SITE MANAGEMENT

8.5 Few of the conventional sites in the surveyhave formal missives of let. At Carbeth theagreement is for the let of the ground for locationof a hut. The provisions of the leases currently inforce were established in the very early 1960s,with minor and inconsequential changes in 1987and 1993 but these did not alter in any way anyof the clauses of the leases. The other exceptionsare the one council-owned site where tenants havea long lease, discussed further below, and the sitein which the occupiers have establishedthemselves as a Trust which has acquired the landfor the mutual benefit of the occupiers, both ofwhich place them in a different category to theother sites.

8.6 Another owner sends out a ‘lease’ each yearwith a letter to his occupiers though it seems tobe a fairly basic document prepared by the ownerhimself. Again it relates to the right to have thehut ‘there’ for the specified period thoughindividual plots are not delineated. In this instancethe lease has been deliberately restricted to oneyear partly because it does not tie the owner downand allows a degree of control over the site in theevent of difficulties. However, it is also seen as away of preserving the character of the site withrelatively unsophisticated dwellings whereasoccupiers with a long lease might be tempted toinvest heavily in developing their huts andsurroundings, turning them into fully fledgedsecond homes. The lease also emphasises theplanning constraint that use is limited to only sixmonths of the year.

8.7 On almost all the other sites paperwork islimited to some form of written request to theoccupiers to pay rent for the following year,occasionally with comments about expectationsof their behaviour and responsibilities, but it ishardly a conventional form of agreement. Twomore recent owners of sites were concerned aboutthe lack of any formal ‘tenancy agreement’ but,when querying the advisability of regularising thearrangements were advised by their lawyers notto embark on contracts which could prove to bedisadvantageous to them as owners.

8.8 Although these arrangements are very laid

8.1 The basic assumption at the outset was thatsite owners owned the land and allowed the hutowners to occupy that land in return for paymentof some form of ‘rent’. Similarly it was assumedthat sites were ‘run’ or ‘managed’, in a fairlyorganised way whereas in reality for the most partthey seem more or less to run themselves in amuch more informal fashion. This section of thereport looks at the kind of managementarrangements which exist. While it can touch ontenure and other legal issues it was never intended,nor would it have been practicable for this studyto examine these in detail.

8.2 The most basic factor in site functioning isthe existence of some form of agreement betweenthe person who owns the land and the people whowish to have a hut on that land and to their rights,if any, to be there. This in turn is likely to includearrangements about amounts of rent and whenand how this is paid, dealt with in Section 10.Other factors include the responsibilities of thesite owner, the things the occupiers are or are notallowed to do in or with their huts and on the siteas a whole. The extent to which all these aspectsare formalised varied widely from site to site.

Agreements between owner and occupier

8.3 In principle, three broad types of agreementcan be identified. The first is the formal missiveof let, while the second is a less formal writtendocument, possibly only in the form of a lettersetting out some ground rules and the rent. In thethird, paperwork is little more than vestigial anda ‘gentleman’s agreement’ is the main linkbetween the two parties.

8.4 The most consistent feature to emerge fromsite owners is the almost complete absence offormal agreements between them and theiroccupiers. In many cases there is little more thana verbal agreement or possibly just a letter oncea year asking for the rent. Formal rules andregulations again are rare, though there may beassumptions about what should and should notbe done, sometimes also incorporated into the rentletters.

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back, for the most part they appear to work - oneowner’s letter in January emphasises thatoccupation of the huts and land should be in asense of fairness and co-operation, in return forwhich few conditions on site use are imposed onoccupiers. Another’s similar style of letter goesout in May before the rent is due at the end of themonth and the occupiers are supposed to sign thisand return it with the rent. By doing so the ownerregards them as having agreed to both rent andconditions - thus it possibly constitutes a form of‘contract’ though the letter itself was careful notto mention the word ‘tenancy’ - but it is anattempt to keep arrangements fairly informal.Similarly the owner of a very long-standing estatesite expressed the view that occupiers did not haveany rights over the land other than to place andmaintain their hut on it and as far as he is awarethey probably do not even have any formal rightof access to the site but, once again, it has neverbeen an issue. Again in this case there is nopaperwork or lease other than the annual letterasking for the rent.

8.9 On one or two sites paperwork is even morevestigial. The owner may merely keeps a recordof names, addresses and telephone numbers ofoccupiers, partly in case it is necessary to chaseup missing rent but also because he/she has tomake an annual return of this information to theValuation Assessors. In each case the owner’sperception is that they have full rights over theland, while the occupiers have full ownership oftheir huts which are allowed to stay on the landin return for the annual rent, in all cases payable- theoretically - in advance, thus giving the siteowner a degree of security for the year.

8.10 At the lowest end of the formality scale ontwo sites there is no form of agreement, nor evencontact, between the site owner and occupiers.On one, though the factor emphasised that it wasonly surmise on his part, it was suggested that,given the particular nature of this location andthe length of time it had been in place, the hutowners might even now own the small areas ofground since the huts are now on a firmly foundedbase, i.e. a concrete foundation since under Scotslaw they therefore have acquired a right to theland - it is not within the scope of this study toexpress a view one way or the other. On the othersite no rent had ever been charged and no writtenagreement entered into with any of the occupierssince the site started in the 1930s. While the site

owner knew the names and ’phone number of thefew remaining occupiers this was largely so thathe had some idea of who was around but alsobecause there was an informal understanding thatsometimes an occupier might give him a handwith some work on his small farm, such as slatingor painting as a goodwill gesture in return for useof the land.

Other tenures

8.11 A number of the sites proved to have otherforms of tenure. While in practice this puts themoutwith the definition initially adopted for thestudy they are important in that the sitesthemselves share many of the features of the‘conventional’ hut site, and may indeed haveoriginated as such, but give the occupiers greaterdegrees of security. This in turn has implicationsor potential lessons for the future of huts.

8.12 On the one council owned site each plotholder has a full lease which runs until May 2012.If a hut changes hands the new occupiers are givena lease starting with their date of entry but againterminating on the above date. The currentassumption is that, barring any problems at thattime everyone will then be given a newcontinuation lease from in May 2012. The natureof this lease also reflects the fact that this site hasa more highly developed infrastructure than othersites and generally has more sophisticated huts.

8.13 The study has shown that on a number of‘sites’ the individual plots of ground are nowowned by the hut occupier. In some cases thishas been a fairly recent event where an estateowner has died and part of it has been sold off inthis way. In others it seems likely that occupiersmay have been sold a small piece of land at thetime they asked to put up a hut, thoughinformation about this is sketchy and largelyanecdotal.

8.14 One alternative form of agreement - andprobably the most recent - grew up in responseto potential threat to a coastal site in Angus. Thisarrangement is still in its early days but may beapplicable in other situations. In this instance allthe occupiers of a site, working as a group, havebeen able to acquire the land which is now vestedin a Trust of which they are all members. Thiswas done when a long established site was seen

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to be vulnerable to speculative development fromoutside. Following the formation of the Trust thebest way to protect the individual interests of theoccupiers was seen to be to set themselves up asa company limited by guarantee, rather than justas a loose association of members, with theobjectives of securing the future for the hutterson the land, protecting the area from speculatorsand developers and conservation of the coastalpath for the long term use and enjoyment of thepublic. Eventually all the land was acquired andthe Trust applied for and acquired charitablestatus. An ‘Owners’ Agreement’ defines therights, obligation and responsibilities of eachindividual owner in relation to the Trust as awhole. While some of the individual occupiershad reservations in the early stages these wereeventually overcome and the new organisationhas had the effect of bringing the occupierstogether as a much more cohesive group. Such ascenario is not necessarily suitable for all sites.Its success depends partly on the nature of thesite, on the willingness of a landowner to sell theland, a readiness of each of the occupiers tocontribute both financially and in interest andeffort and, finally, awareness of the mostappropriate channels through which to work andskills within the occupiers themselves to utilisethese to best effect.

Respective rights and responsibilities

8.15 Though rarely written down, in most casesthere are certain understandings between siteowner and occupiers over maintenance, discussedfurther below, restrictions on subletting andsometimes on the periods of the year when thehuts can be occupied. In most cases the last ofthese is largely a practical matter of theunsuitability of huts for use in the winter ratherthan any particularly restrictive attitudes on thepart of the site owner. Even then there is usuallyno objection to them visiting in the winter monthsin order to carry out maintenance.

8.16 Each side has some degree of responsibilitywithin an agreement. What site owners put intotheir sites in terms of resources is very variable.Only in one instance is there a strong proactiveapproach but here is has been seen to be necessaryin order to prevent an estate as a whole from goinginto serious decline and taking the huts with it.More commonly owners, both original and new,

seem to put in more or less the minimum of effortand resources. We have seen that few if anyservices are provided apart from the most basicof water supplies. Mains electricity is virtuallynon-existent and provision any kind of facilityfor disposal of chemical toilet waste is rare. Eventhe access to sites is mostly whatever was therebefore the huts arrived, generally in the form of afarm track or simple access. Only on the largestsite, itself scattered across a number of separateareas, has there been a conscious attempt toupgrade access tracks to make them suitable formotor vehicles. At the opposite end of thespectrum an owner may do absolutely nothingwith the ‘site’, it is there, they can stay on it free,so be it!

8.17 Some site owners are involved in their sitesbut most are not and largely leave them to runthemselves, provided they do not generateproblems. This reflects personal interest ratherthan a management need and also the degree ofany relationship between site owner andoccupiers. The more involved owners are quiteproprietorial about ‘their’ occupiers and clearlyin some cases there has been a substantial levelof social interaction.

8.18 Occupiers are also expected to do certainthings or behave in certain ways. In practice it isdifficult to find fault with most of the ‘regulations’since they are mostly, a mix of common sense,reasonableness and neighbourliness.‘Regulations’ rarely seem to be set down on paper.The owner of one large site prepared a list of rulessome years ago and sent it to occupiers whenasking for the rent but after a while ceased tobother.

Seasonal occupancy

8.19 The basic rule underlying all hut use, is thathuts are intended only for weekend or holidayuse and not for permanent dwelling.

8.20 Limits are sometimes set on the number ofdays/nights in the year on which huts can beoccupied, or on times of year. The most formalspecifies use only for ‘seven days per weekbetween 1 March and 30 November of any oneyear, at weekends, including Friday night andSunday morning between 1 and 23 December andseven days per week between 24 December of theimmediately following year’. Here, huts may only

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be used as holiday accommodation, with amaximum of 28 days stay at any one time anduse for any business purpose is forbidden.

8.21 One small site makes it clear that occupiersare entitled to the enjoyment of their huts asholiday homes for up to six months of the year.Over and above this there are no particularconstraints on what people can do with their huts.Others allow their occupiers to use their huts moreor less any time they want provided there is nodamage, though as noted earlier in the report oneowner sees a particular problem about winter usewith occupiers coming out with four-wheel drivevehicles which churn up the ground where thereis no underlying hard-core.

8.22 In practice restrictions of this kind representa mix of the historic function of the sites and apragmatic response to seasonal conditions sincefew huts are built to a standard appropriate towinter weather occupation.

8.23 While not always literally spelled out in anagreement, occupiers cannot ‘sub-let’, thoughpractice varies and some owners takes a fairlyrelaxed view about the hut being lent to othermembers of the family for the odd weekend orshort holiday. Similarly while visitors generallyseem to be allowed there are sometimesrestrictions on them staying overnight, perhapsunderstandable given the limited space availablein the majority of huts. Only in one instance doesthe lease agreement individually specify thenames of those allowed to stay overnight, the totalof which is limited to a maximum number of sixpeople. One owner referred to one of herpredecessors going round huts at weekends somethirty or forty years ago and charging an extrashilling (a not insignificant amount at the time)per visitor per night.

Keeping huts and plots in good condition

8.24 Despite the informality of mostarrangements between site owner and hut owner,owners generally expect that huts will be kept inreasonably good condition, in practice often alsoa stipulation of the local planning authority. Whatconstitutes ‘good condition’ clearly varies fromsite to site but on the whole both sides appear tohave at least some interest in maintenance. Muchdepends on how much individual huts are used.Those in fairly regular use are mostly better

maintained, though other may remain untouchedand unused for a year or more and then come backinto use.

Relationship to working farms

8.25 Given that many hut sites are on or adjacentto farm land, albeit often only fairly rough pastureit is not surprising that site ‘regulations’ are likelyto include features such as not to take stones fromdry-stone dykes, not to knock or cut down treeson the site, keeping clear of the open parts of thesite which are in agricultural use and keepinggates shut, particularly as parts of the sitesthemselves may be used for grazing stock.Another stipulation on a site which is part of aworking farm is that, for fairly obvious reasons,no dogs are allowed on the site.

8.26 Perhaps the most informal of thearrangements is founded on a general expectationthat occupiers should do nothing that woulddamage the future of the site on the owner’ssurrounding land or bring it into disrepute.Basically this owner’s main interest is in ensuringthat what is there is maintained in a way that willkeep his land as he would like to have it, butotherwise he does not see the need to imposeconstraints and in turn his trust does not appearto be abused.

Site owner powers

8.27 On the whole the ways in which most sitesoperate means that sanctions on occupiers areweak in practice. While there is a supposedresponsibility to maintain a hut in a reasonablecondition, there is no obligation to use it regularly.Many occupiers seem quite able to enjoy theirown hut and its plot even when the one next dooris in poor shape. It is when the absent occupiersand the run down huts begin to be in the majoritythat the sites are likely to go into serious decline.

8.28 Site owners were asked what powers theyhad - or were aware of - to terminate occupancyof a plot it they wished to do so. Most were quitecandid and admitted that they had little, if any,idea. All were conscious that they owned the landand that the occupiers only owned their huts.While one or two felt that they might be able toget an eviction order through the courts, there was

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also an underlying concern that occupiers mighthave acquired some form of rights through havingbeen there for many years. However, the absenceof any clear view on this potential problem largelystems from the fact that it is not an issue whichhas ever really arisen. Where there have beendifficulties, either they have been sorted out bydirect comment from owner to occupier, or insome cases by an older generation ‘ticking off’the offending offspring. Alternatively, theamounts of money involved in failure to pay therent have been so low that owners feel it wouldnot be cost effective to institute proceedings.Across the full span, owners do not appear to havebeen taken too much advantage of by theiroccupiers.

8.29 On two of the sites, with more formalagreements the owners indicated that they wouldterminate a lease if there had been a major andmaterial breach of the lease, such as excessivedisturbance other tenants, but emphasised that thishad happened very rarely. Other grounds wouldbe failure to pay rent after repeated requests. Theneed to do this seems to occur very rarely andone owner’s view was that as rent was paid inadvance occupiers were more likely to ‘behave’over the year. Otherwise she felt that there waslittle that could be done other than issue formalNotice to Quit. In this context another owner wasconcerned that, in the light of comments from one

or two occupiers that they might have acquiredtenancy rights over time, this was a grey areawhich ought to be looked into this again but thisprobably reflects publicity over recent disputesat Carbeth. At the same time this owner identifieda potential problem for herself in trying removean occupier. While in theory the occupier wasbound to remove the hut under thesecircumstances, refusal to do so would leave theowner with significant clearance costs, out of allproportion to the rental involved.

8.30 Only in two instances had owners actuallyresorted to formal Notice to Quit or been awareof it having been used by their predecessors. Inone instance a new owner used it successfullyafter acquiring the site on account of a number ofwhat were seen as ‘undesirable elements’occupying huts. However, in this case as well asissuing the notices the owner offered to buy thehuts and then demolished those which were mostrun down or else found new occupiers for them.In the other instance, at the time the new ownerwas negotiating to buy the farm and site, he notedthat all the then occupiers had been served Noticeto Quit presumably as a standard legal practicesince a potential owner might be put off buyingland with sitting tenants. In practice it caused noproblems for him and he was then able to startfrom scratch by issuing the first of his new annualleases.

22

changes in rent levels over time, some respondentsmade passing reference to changes and moreinformation came from the site ownersthemselves. One or two owners had increasedrents very roughly in line with inflation but otherssuddenly realised there had not been an increasefor some time and made a change. Perhaps inproportional terms such increases might appearsubstantial but, given the very low base level, evena 25 percent increase which takes a rent from £40to £50 a year hardly seems grounds for seriouscomplaint. Even at Carbeth where there had beenone substantial increase in recent years, leadingto occupier protest, this has to be seen in a contextof a long preceding period of low and thereforeactually declining rent and the need for substantialresource input to the site’s infrastructure.Occasionally when a complete outsider has takena site over there have been more substantial initialincreases.

9.5 In many cases the time when rent is duereflects site origins, sometimes in July, historicallylinked to local trade holidays such Glasgow Fairand the start of the main period of hut use. Otherowners choose Easter when occupiers start usingthe huts again, but there is no consistent pattern.

9.6 Success in actually collecting rent is alsovariable. Some rents due in the spring do notmaterialise until September or even later but inmost cases do finally arrive and very rarely hadbeen left completely unpaid. Owners accept thatthere are some bad payers and occasionally havedifficulty in getting people to pay up before thefollowing year, particularly those who rarely usetheir huts. Much depends on owner:occupierrelationships. In practice most owners seem fairlyrelaxed about late payers provided there is notrouble on the site and the rent eventually arrives.Owners recognise that in a few cases occupiersmay deliberately delay but eventually pay up. Inthe same way one owner noted that occasionallyan occupier may disappear for a year or two andthen suddenly re-appear - under thesecircumstances while he will try to get the missedrent back but does not push this beyond a certainpoint if the occupier seems to be moving back ona fairly regular basis.

9 COSTS

Rentals

9.1 In present day terms most rents charged tohut occupiers are very low and, in a couple ofinstances totally non-existent. Most sites forwhich information is available currently haverents equivalent to £5 a week or less. In each ofthe few instances of higher rents the level isprobably justified by what the occupiers get inreturn. This may be in terms of being on a smallbut fully serviced site with the manager livingadjacent and keeping an eye on the huts in theoccupiers’ absence. In another instance, occupiersare getting not just a fully serviced site but also avery long lease, unlike that on any other hut site.

9.2 Both the site owner and occupier elementsof the study revealed a wide range of annual plotrentals. The highest charge was £800 but this wasin the context of a long lease on a fully servicedsite. Rent is generally payable annually, the onlyexceptions being at Carbeth where an option ofmonthly payments has been available and on thecouncil owned site where it is payable in two six-monthly instalments by means of a StandingOrder.

9.3 The occupier survey showed that half paidless than £200 per year to keep their huts on thesite. The table shows the spread of rental paid.

9.4 Rent levels have risen very slowly over theyears, generally at rates which mean that theyhave been declining in real terms. Though theoccupier survey did not specifically ask for

Annual rent levels on sites

%

<100 19100-199 27200-299 18300-399 2400-499 2500-599 2600+ 30

100

23

9.7 Apart from Carbeth, where much of thereason for the recent disputes has been laid at thedoor of rent levels and, in particular the steepnessof increases, only one reference was made to pastdifficulty with a few occupiers more than ten yearsago when, not long after buying the site, theyinitially tried to put up the rent. This led to someresistance by occupiers but in practice the issuewas resolved fairly quickly, the few difficultoccupiers left and since then there was said tohave been no animosity from those who remainand overall there is a good relationship betweensite owner and occupiers.

Hut Values

9.8 In virtually all the above instances rent isthe only charge made by the site owner. However,huts are rated by local Valuation Boards and it isthe responsibility of the individual occupiers topay these non-domestic rates direct to the localcouncil. Most owners appear to have to completea form for the Assessor’s department each yearlisting the names and address of the hut ownerson their sites. This is not always easy as peoplesometimes disappear for a year or two or a hutmay change hands without the site owner havingbeen told, something which, though officially notallowed in most of the agreements howeverinformal, does occur. It is this, principally, whichmost owners say is the justification for insistingon being informed of a change in advance and ofhaving the details of the new occupier.

9.9 Valuation Board data provides a picture ofthe range of rateable values, and hence of the ratesthemselves for a number of areas for which datawas available. Most huts have very low rateablevalues and it is only a few of the better servicedones or the more substantially built structures onwhich the levels increase.

9.10 The most basic huts appear to have valuesof between £80 and £100. Slightly bigger/betterhuts are in the £100-150 range but additions andimprovements increase values towards £300.Small numbers further up the transition progresstowards a holiday home carry much higher values,in one case just under £1000. Most of the highfigures essentially are outliers which perhapsdistort what is a lower average RV. The table

shows clear differences between ValuationBoards for which there is data.

9.11 Though rates should not be a significantfactor in overall hut costs, they appear to be acommon source of complaint, largely becauseoccupiers feel that they get little, if anything, inreturn for these payments. This is seenparticularly in the context of refuse collection.As seen earlier, some owners make provision forbagged refuse to be taken to a central point ormay themselves provide ‘wheelie-bins’, butoccupiers say that the council does not evenprovide them with rubbish sacks.

Valuation Board

A B C D E F ALL£ £ £ £ £ £ £

Max. 230 988 710 250 800 200 988Min. 85 127 105 75 90 200 75Mean 120 286 225 120 335 200 229

% % % % % % %<£100 26 0 0 25 1 0 9£100-199 68 9 51 68 9 0 32£200-299 6 68 36 7 40 100 41£300-399 0 20 9 0 19 0 12£400-499 0 1 0 0 16 0 2£500-599 0 0 2 0 6 0 1£600+ 0 2 2 0 7 0 2

TOTAL 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

Other Costs

9.12 On one site where the individual huts aremostly connected to mains electricity theoccupiers are responsible for their own separatelymetered costs, but in this instance water isincluded with their rates

9.13 The one site where there is another formof cost to individual occupiers is that which hasbecome a charitable trust where each occupierowns an equal share of the land vested in thetrust, but with provision for a buy back of theshare if the trust is wound up. Here, there is anobligation on each occupier to contribute to therunning costs of the trust and to general sitemaintenance.

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10 HUT OWNERSHIP

friend or someone known on a site. Others mightfind out via a relative. Sometimes it might be moreof a chance contact. However, there is some otherevidence of people’s long term interest in anddesire for a hut. Some had been on a deliberatehunt, while for others it was more of case ofchance.

Transferring ownership of a hut

10.5 There seems to be much uncertainty amongoccupiers on rented sites as to the extent to whichthey can transfer ownership of the hut to someoneelse. Although about two thirds say that they can,this may be hedged around with constraints.

10.6 Only where there is a formal lease are therespecific stipulations about how transfers may takeplace. Generally it is more of an ‘understanding’.

10.7 Site owners usually stipulate that theyshould know in advance if a hut is going to changehands, by whatever means, and know who thesuccessor occupant is. The argument for this isthat they need to know that that person is goingto be able to pay the rent or is not likely to be adisruptive influence on the site, together with thefact, as noted earlier, that they have to provideperiodic return to the local Valuation Assessorsto ensure that rates are paid by the occupiers. Inpractice where there are changes the owner maynot find out about it until well after the event.Even in the case of the local authority-owned sitethere seems to be a fairly relaxed view abouttransfers. On two sites there is a form of chargeimposed by the site owner, either charged to bothseller and buyer as a fixed fee or taken as apercentage of the sale price of the hut thoughdetails in responses were a little vague

10.8 Site owner impressions are that, overall,turnover is low. A few examples suggested levelsof ten percent or less a year, though at Carbeth,the largest of the sites, turnover was said to havebeen higher than this but fairly consistent over anumber of years.

10.9 Modest turnover, does not reflect lack ofinterest. A number of owners indicated that they

Acquiring a hut

10.1 The occupier survey indicated that whilenearly a third of the huts had been acquired withinthe past ten years, as many as a quarter ofoccupiers had owned their huts for at least 30years and a few dated their acquisition or theirfamily’s ownership to before W.W.II. However,site owners often felt that the majority of the hutschanged hands by inheritance though there weresome contrary findings from the occupier surveywhich suggested that only about one in five hutsappeared to have been inherited and the greatmajority had been acquired by purchase. Theexact nature of transfer even within a family israrely clear and money may well change hands,affecting their perceptions of ‘purchase. Inpractice it means that huts are rarely acquired onthe open market.

10.2 Site owners also commented on continuityof hut ownership through a family and thepresence of related occupiers across a site. Thereis also evidence of considerable longevity, forexample two current occupiers had been theremore or less since the site started in the 1930s.In some cases already a third generation is present.While new people buying and becomingoccupiers has increased, many of these seem tobe people who already know about the site andhut availability from friends or neighbours.

10.3 Most purchase of huts is through informalcontact, either word of mouth or a hut beingoffered by a friend. Only one in six were inresponse to advertisements and a similarproportion through other channels. Some peopleclearly had advance knowledge and interest in aparticular site, referring to having seen a noticeon a hut or an advertisement in a local inn, whileothers found it through the press. One must havebeen on the lookout for a site for some timejudging by the comments that...‘when my partnerwas an apprentice, some 20-odd years ago, hisboss owned a hut and it was always my partner’swish to buy one’.

10.4 Locating a hut via word of mouth might beeither a direct purchase from a friend or moreobliquely through information via a friend of a

25

get a telephone calls asking if any huts arebecoming vacant. Few, if any, handle sales onbehalf of occupiers though owners might referenquiries to a hut owner if that person is knownto be wanting to sell. Occasionally, where there

are elderly people who are beginning to loseinterest or ability to maintain their hut a site ownermay suggest that they might be better to find anew occupier rather than let the hut deterioratetoo much.

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11 PATTERNS OF HUT USE

11.1 It was important to assess the extent towhich huts continued to be used, patterns of usewithin the year and any changes in level of useacross the years. Information on these aspectscomes both from the more structured occupiersurvey and from site owner discussions. Inparticular, the latter are able to give a better overallindication of change over time.

11.2 Owners did not identify any clear patternsof change in level of use over the years and muchseems to depend on the nature of the site, thepeople on it and perhaps the attitude of the siteowner. In one instance most of the presentoccupiers appear to use the site very regularly.Some are older and retired people who haveowned their huts and been coming to them for along time, one having been coming everyweekend since 1961, when he built his hut and,now he is retired, his weekends seem to beextending in length. In contrast on another sitehuts were said to be used less now than they werein, say, the 1960s and 1970s. Another owner’simpression was of some change in pattern. In thepast people used to come out for the full weekendor even longer, though now they tend rather moreto come out for days. They used to come up tothe farm and buy milk and eggs but rarely do sonowadays as they bring everything by car. In somecases decline in use reflects older people whoperhaps brought their children up with weekendsand holidays at the hut. As the children havegrown up they may have lost interest but, in somecases, once they have set up their own familiesthere is a resurgence of interest in using the hut,sometimes for economic reasons or even just aspart of a family tradition, especially whengrandparents are still occupying the hut.

11.3 Particular sites sometimes have distinctpatterns. The one site which has changed tobecome a trust which owns the land for the mutualbenefit of its occupiers is very regularly usedduring the summer, not just at weekends but forlonger periods with family and friends ofoccupiers also using the huts at different times.One or two huts are in almost constant use duringthe summer. Here one of the other benefits is thatwhile initially the occupiers appear to have

functioned as individuals with not a great deal ofinteraction, the new ownership structure appearsto have brought people together much more as acommunity with shared needs andresponsibilities.

11.4 The occupier survey underlines many of theowners’ more subjective comments. Overall, twoout of five occupiers said that they used them‘frequently’ or ‘all the time’. Nearly as many usedthem ‘regularly’ compared with only about halfthis number who used them only ‘occasionally’.Frequency was slightly lower among the huts onowned sites with twice as many people sayingthat they used their huts ‘occasionally’.

11.5 Both owners and occupiers confirm that usevaries seasonally. This reflects both weather andsome site owner constraints on the periods of theyear at which huts can be used for overnight stays.Some huts may be used only rarely, sometimesnot for a year or two at a time, while others areheavily used through much of the year.Predictably most winter use was limited toweekdays, possibly for maintenance or checks onhut security, and some weekends though morethan two fifths of hut owners did not use theirhuts at all at this season. In any case, despitestoves or alternative forms of heating, few hutswould be suitable for any length of winter stay.Use begins to increase during the springparticularly at weekends and now some stay forlonger periods, possibly during Easter holidays.By the summer it is concentrated as weekend andlonger period use for around one in threerespondents in each case. The increase in use fromthe beginning of the summer trade holidaysonwards reflects the origin of many sites. Autumnuse closely mirrors that of spring with a return tomainly weekend use in about half the cases.

11.6 Use patterns on owned sites have apredominance of ‘longer period’ particularlyseven and fourteen nights, equating with greateruse for spring or summer ‘proper holidays’,perhaps for people who live at a longer distanceand see their huts as a ‘second home’. Thiscompares with a predominance of frequent‘weekend’ use, with stays of two or three nights

27

on rented sites, which are perhaps closer to homelocations and therefore easier to use. However,site owners note that their older occupiers maymake more midweek or long weekend visits, oreven stay for longer periods, perhaps withchildren or grandchildren accompanying them.

Changing use levels over time

11.6 As many as one in three of the occupiersare now using their huts more than in the past.Over the time during which they had owned theirhut only one in five are now using it less, mostlyfor one or other of two groups of reasons: either

change in personal/family circumstances ornegative features about the site. Decline in usemost often reflected a family outgrowing theirinterest in the hut and preferring other forms ofholiday or weekends breaks. Lack of time touse the hut is another reason, more often amongthose on rented sites, in contrast to distance fromthe site affecting the largest proportion of thoseon owned sites, while increasing age and ill healthmaking it difficult to use the hut are alsocontributory factors. The ‘site related’ reasons fordecline, generally affecting only rented sites,relate to landlord-tenant matters such as‘disagreements with site owner’, ‘owner wantsto redevelop site’, ‘site has become run down’and ‘owner trying to close site down’.

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12 THE PROS AND CONS OF HAVING A HUT

12.1 Perceived advantages and disadvantages ofhut ownership influence whether people continueto use their huts or have lost interest in them. Theyacquire huts in a variety of ways, throughinheritance, purchase or a variety of other ways.While purchase and most ‘other’ ways imply apositive desire to own a hut including its upkeepand related problems, inheritance may be adoubtful pleasure. Site owners, referred tooccupiers just losing interest or finding their huttoo much of a burden and just leaving it to decay.Many such huts revive with new occupiers butsome smaller sites seem to have completelydisappeared in this manner. What then dooccupiers perceive as the benefits and thedisadvantages of having a hut for them and theirfamilies. Within each it is possible to identify anumber of common headings under whichresponses can be grouped.

Advantages of owning a hut

12.2 Taking all occupiers (i.e. on both rented andon owned sites) two major groups of benefitsemerged as the most substantial, in practice, fairlyclosely related. These may be summarised as‘escape’ and ‘tranquillity’, both frequently usedphrases. The first represents the need to get awayfrom town for a break of some kind, together withthe freedom which this brings. The second,images of ‘peace’ or ‘peace and quiet’ and of‘tranquillity’ are less tangible but nonethelesscommon.

12.3 Three further headings, each of equalimportance, related in turn to the value ofsurroundings, of health and of relaxation. The firstis associated with the kind of environment inwhich huts are located, seen in terms of‘countryside’, ‘location’, ‘scenery’ and ‘nature’.

12.4 The feeling that being at the hut is ‘healthy’and, depending on the locality, that it incorporatessome form of health inducing activity such as‘walking’ or ‘sea and boats’ was also perceivedas important.

12.5 Similarly ‘Relaxation’ and ‘stress-relief’constituted another important beneficial concept,perhaps refreshing the parts that other types ofbreak cannot reach.

12.6 Despite their predominantly older age,occupiers frequently identified the benefits tochildren of hut access. Clearly many suchcomments were made in the context ofgrandchildren or else perhaps as nostalgia for astage at which they themselves were enjoying thehut with their own children when they wereyounger. At the same time there was acontinuation of such perceptions among youngerparents still concerned about bringing theirchildren up children up in a better and saferenvironment than weekday inner city homes,perhaps in difficult localities.

12.7 An interesting aspect of benefits, verymuch related to the ‘P & Q’ feelings noted above,was that of release from the trappings ofconventional present day home/work lifestyle,with an absence of televisions and phones. Thisseemed to be part of an even more primitive urge- occasionally among site owners as well’ - toreturn to ‘simple’ or ‘basic’ living associated withoil lamps, limited washing and cooking facilitiesand getting water other than just out of the mainstap - though the absence of these could be equallydisadvantageous to some occupiers

12.8 The camaraderie of hutting was a seensignificant benefit, referred to both inquestionnaires and in conversations withoccupiers. Comments often related to get-togethers, barbecues or chatting to friends or justas an opportunity to meet friends.

12.9 Given the way in which sites grew up it isnot surprising that family links, both horizontallyand vertically, often exist within a site. In somecase these links were particularly strong withmembers of extended families with longassociation with one site coming to stay at varioustimes of the year.

12.10 Both the emphasis on ‘simple life’ referred

29

to earlier and the ‘family’ also manifestedthemselves as a cohesive concept of familymembers spending more time together at the hutthan at home. In part this reflects enforced closeproximity but can be encouraged by the absenceof electricity placing greater dependence on non-television-based evenings and a general sense oftogetherness12.11 Easy availability of the hut was a particularbenefit for some, either because it was just thereto be visited whenever they felt like it or elsebecause it was easy to get to from home. Similarlybenefits of regular short weekend breaks wereemphasised, something which we have seenearlier in terms of the use patterns of huts ingeneral, or even just going there for even shortertimes

12.12 Cost, or rather the lack of it, though onlyoccasionally referred to, could also be asignificant factor, given the apparent backgroundof many of the occupiers.

12.13 Finally, one interesting perceived benefitwas that of ‘self-help’, reflected in a number ofcomments in the context of maintaining orenhancing a hut and the use or acquisition ofskills.

The disadvantages of hut ownership

12.14 While the last few paragraphs have lookedat the good aspects of hut ownership, inevitablythere were others which were less good. Abouttwo out of five occupiers identified disadvantagesin having their hut. As with benefits it is possibleto group these perceptions under a number ofmain headings. Some differences betweenoccupiers of owned and rented sites emerged andit was in disadvantages, much more than benefits,that differences were evident.

12.15 Perhaps the biggest down-side of hutownership was that of maintaining it, accountingfor a fifth of all comments made - much more soamong those on owned sites, possibly a featureof distance from home to hut and perhaps of moreexpensive huts. Maintenance is a combination ofboth cost and effort, the latter being of particularsignificance to some of the older occupiers,though even younger ones admitted to finding ita burden.

12.16 Three issues of significant concern tooccupiers on rented sites are absent from theowned-site list. These related to tenure, landlordsand rents. However, in terms of overall balanceof disadvantages, it must be acknowledged thatmost, though not all, of the comments under thisheading related to Carbeth with its troubledhistory.

12.17 Tenure problems were not just seen as abasic perception of lack of security but as aparticular worry in terms of the amount of effortand money spent on a hut and the possibility ofthis being lost if an owner decided not to continuethe site, or if it changed hands. One example ofthis actually having happened came in the courseof a chance conversation with a hut occupier,who lost her hut and virtually everything in itwhen a site changed hands during a summerabout ten years ago and the new owners wishedto develop the land for housing. When shereturned to the site after a summer absence it wasto find that the hut which she and her late husbandhad built and owned for many years and whichhad been a major part of their existence, had beenlifted off the site by a digger in her absence anddestroyed. She received no recompense. Despitethis unhappy experience her fondness for hutownership led her to find one on another site inthe vicinity.

12.18 The attitude and powers of the landlordcaused concern in some instances. This wassometimes in fairly low key terms, perhapsreflecting the results of a change in ownership,but more often there were more stronglyarticulated issues.

12.19 While we have seen that in general site rentlevels are low in some instance they were muchhigher and for some constituted a majordisadvantage of ownership, mainly in the contextof steep and supposedly unjustified increases inrelation to what was provided in return.

12.20 The isolation of many hut sites and the facthuts themselves are in only intermittent usemeans that they can be prone to vandalism. Insome cases this perceived disadvantage of hutownership was based on actual experience ofdamage to the individual’s hut but even amongother occupiers there were general concernsabout it as a potential problem.

30

12.21 We have also seen perceptions of the‘simple life’ as a distinct benefit for someoccupiers, but others viewed it from a differentperspective where absence of mains services wasa disadvantage. Though mains electricity andwater was occasionally mentioned, drainage andflush toilets were seen as a more significant lack,in spite of a high presence of at least a chemicalcloset for most huts. Sometimes other occupiers’own efforts at improving their huts could causeproblems for their neighbours on the site.However, some comments indicated that‘experienced hutters’ might be more tolerant ofthese absent services than their visitors.

12.22 Two related difficulties figured much morein the comments of occupiers on owned sites andthis probably reflects use pattern. These were

issues of distance from home - and we have shownthat some of this group of owner-occupier maylive very long distances from their hut - and abilityto use it in the context of not being able to get tothe hut as often as they would like. For theseoccupiers, use of the hut may be largely limitedto a summer holiday or perhaps a shorter breakaround Easter, rather than the pattern of regularweekend use which is more common amongoccupiers on rented sites.

12.23 Although it might appear to be a relateddisadvantage, in practice some comments aboutdifficulties of access related more to physicalaccess in terms of roads or paths within the site,and this also applies to problems of the generalcondition of the site.

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13 CONCLUSIONS

13.1 Hut sites have been a feature of the Scottishlandscape for around 80 years. Some are visibleto passers by, others hidden. Some are large, otherssmall. Some are owned by individuals, fewer bylarger estates. Some are in decline, others static.They started and grew to fit particular needs andtimes but both have changed. Almost certainlythere were more sites some 30 or 40 years agobut, while they still constitute a significantpresence, numbers of huts on individual sites noware either static or declining. Decline has beengreatest on the largest sites but even some smallersites have reduced, been redeveloped for other,possibly more gainful, uses or just disappeared.Over the years sites have undergone a process oftransition. Some huts may have been replaced,first by small sites for mobile or semi-mobilecaravans and, later, by static caravan sites. Otherforms of transition can be seen in groups ofdwellings which have become something betweenhut sites, ‘holiday homes’ or even established two-storey houses. Isolated huts have put down firmerroots and acquired facilities until they areindistinguishable from many other small Scottishrural or coastal dwellings. A few sites have beensold off as individual plots to their occupiers,while one is now owned jointly by its occupiersas a mutual trust.

13.2 This study has identified a number offeatures with implications for the future of hutsand hutting. On one hand occupiers are largelyan ageing population, implying potential declinein usage and eventual disappearance of sites infuture years. Similarly many owners also are olderwith little resources or desire to make significantchange or investment in their sites. While contentto continue, even though the site provides littlereturn, it is likely that it is only if it does not requiremuch input or generate ‘hassle’. Many occupiersmay be content to live with the status quo, willstill put time and effort into their huts as they donow and sites will probably continue to ‘tick over’as they have done for a long time. On the otherhand younger involvement has emerged amongboth owners and occupiers but their respectiveexpectations are likely to be different. Occupiersmay seek better services and security but may not

be prepared for the higher levels of rent whichthese will bring. Owners may expect greatercontrol and higher levels of return on anyinvestment. While more run down and little usedhuts might disappear or be taken over andimproved, sites would be subject to greatercontrols. Either way, the traditional sites wouldbe replaced by more ordered, even if low key,holiday chalet sites, perhaps with a different kindof occupier.

13.3 Can sites and huts survive? Do people wantthem to? This depends on the perspective fromwhich they are viewed. Huts and sites grewbefore the days of land and planning controls andneither ‘conform’ in today’s more constrainedworld. Even if officialdom cannot get rid of them,it might be happier to see them slowly wither onthe vine. Even huts that have had a great deal oftime, effort and resources put into them are stillunconventional structures. On the other hand, oneof the most important features throughout hasbeen that, by and large, occupiers have managedto do as they like with their huts and modify themto meet changing needs and preferences to anextent unlikely to be possible in their day to dayhomes. Perhaps the other most important findingof the study is that, despite the very informal, notto say haphazard, basis on which many sites aremanaged, the over-riding impression is that onthe whole they ‘work’, albeit at a variety of levels.

13.4 At present the equilibrium is delicatelybalanced. If disturbed, sites are unlikely tocontinue in their present form and thoughsomething may take their place it will be adifferent and more formal structure. If leftundisturbed, hut sites probably will survive, atleast in the short term. There is still a substantialenough body of occupiers who love their huts,devote time and resources to them and for whomthey are an important part of their lives. Huts arethe product of personal individuality, ingenuityand manual skills, not just on the part of theiroriginal builders but of successive occupiers. Hutsites are possibly the last bastion of a kind ofindividual freedom to ‘nest’, particularly for thesections of population who originally sparked

32

them off. At the beginning of the 21st century,hut sites may seem an anachronism. One ownersaid that ‘they came in the 20th century and went

in the 20th century’, but in practice and in theirdifferent ways nearly all seem to be making itinto the new millennium fairly successfully.

A - 1

APPENDIX A

HOW THE STUDY WAS CARRIED OUT

A - 2

STAGE 1 - FINDING SITES

1 A number of possible data sources wereconsidered for the study with a view to their be-ing used in combination, each with potential ei-ther to expand on information revealed only par-tially by one source or to cross check other sourcesfor accuracy. In practice, in the course of the studyadditional sources emerged and were used in simi-lar ways.

Survey of local planning authorities

2 It was assumed that local Planning Depart-ments should be aware of developments of thiskind within their areas and therefore were seenas a prime source. The first line of enquiry wastherefore a written enquiry to each of the Plan-ning Department in each Council in Scotland, Asimple questionnaire was used to ensure consist-ency of data.

3 As well as completing the basic question-naire, authorities were asked, where possible, toprovide any additional information such as loca-tion maps or supplementary sources. Authoritieswith no sites within their areas were specificallyasked to make a nil returns.

Additional sources

4 Given that a local authority might know ofthe existence of huts somewhere within its areabut hold only limited information about a givenlocation additional sources were used to confirmand expand the data.

Valuation Rolls

5 As a result of the return provided by onePlanning Department which included extractsfrom local valuation rolls giving direct referenceto ‘living huts’ on four of the known sites withinthat Council’s area, an approach was made to allthe Valuation Boards (with one or two specificexceptions), seeking similar extracts from localRolls. With the letter of enquiry, Assessors werealso sent copies of the Planning questionnaire toensure clear and consistent definitions would beclear.

Maps

6 In the postal survey, Planning Departmentswere asked to give Ordnance Survey Grid Refer-ences for any sites which they identified. Theywere also asked for map extracts or layout plansof sites where these were available. In practicethe former were only provided in a few cases andthe latter were very rare.

7 A map search at 1:10,000 scale was under-taken for every site identified in either the Plan-ning or Assessor (see below) surveys, either totry to find a site location where only an addressor an uncertain OSGR was available but also toprovide some information on site character, par-ticularly where the Assessor survey was the onlysource of information.

Land Registry (Registers of Scotland)

8 The Land Registry was seen as a possiblesource of ancillary information on site ownershipfor sites already identified by other means ratherthan as a way of initial site identification. In prac-tice it proved useful for this purpose in a smallnumber of cases within the Stage 1 survey.

Rent Registration Service

9 The initial rapid trawl by the headquartersof the Rent Registration Service of its regionaloffices provided a certain amount of informationwhich once again was used as a cross check oninformation generated by other sources. In a fewcases, where there appeared to be inconsistenciesa subsequent check was made directly with theregional RRS office to clarify points from the ini-tial return.

STAGE 2 - UNDERSTANDING SITES

The owner perspective

10 The main source of information on siteowners was a number of semi-structured inter-views. The target population was the owners ofall sites identified in Stage 1 as having ten or morehuts. Some 20 sites were initially identified forthis stage though owners for another four couldnot be identified. However, one or two additional

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possible interviews were identified from addi-tional Valuation Roll data.

11 Letters were sent to owners seeking an in-terview and setting out the purpose of the study,the issues to be covered and some of thedefinitional background. Apart from those sitesfor which owners could not be found, a few ini-tial approaches proved unsuccessful. However,in the end interviews were obtained with 15 own-ers, covering the full spectrum of site sizes withinthe given range.

12 Inevitably, given the nature of the ownersthemselves, the length of time they have had thesites and what generally turned out to be a sur-prising lack of hard, paper-based records, muchof the interview information material was basedon recall and tended to be impressionistic. Nev-ertheless the benefits of this approach were that agreat deal of additional information emerged in-cidentally, not just about the pre-defined param-eters of the interview but about site change overtime, about the hut occupiers and about the siteowners themselves and their philosophy towardstheir sites and, often, what they often regarded as‘their hutters’.

13 Wherever possible interviews were supple-mented by a visit to the site itself, either in thecompany of the owner or independently. Theseproved particularly valuable in building up an un-derstanding of the what site looked like and howthey operated and, in a few cases provided anopportunity to talk to a small number of occupi-ers.

14 In the course of the interview stage of thestudy opportunity was also taken to visit othersites identified in the course of Stage 1 or locatedsubsequently. Some were sites for which ownerscould not be identified or on which individualplots had been sold off to the hut owners in re-cent years. Other were outwith the target sizerange but were due to be included in the ‘occu-pier’ element with its larger catchment.

The occupier perspective

15 Given that, when the study was commis-sioned, there was little or no body of knowledgeabout both where and what huts and hutters were,

two considerations were of particular importancein trying to build up a picture from the occupier.The first related to the kinds of information whichoccupiers might be able to provide about them-selves and their huts. Second, and even more cru-cial in practice, was the ways in which that infor-mation might be obtained.

16 Four broad aspects were identified as rel-evant to the study:

the nature of huts themselves;

administrative arrangements between siteowner and hut occupier;

patterns of use of huts;

occupier characteristics.

17 It was recognised that any informationavailable from occupiers was likely to be a mixof fact, recall and, possibly, supposition, particu-larly over past history of use, not just by currentoccupiers but, even more, when a tenancy/licencechanged hands, whether by purchase or by hand-ing down by inheritance, some huts being thoughtto have been owned by a number of generationsof the same family

18 There was much uncertainty about how in-formation could be collected from occupiers.Face-to-face interviews were impractical, mainlyon grounds of the difficulty of making contactwith occupiers but also on cost grounds if a suffi-cient coverage were to be achieved. Alternativeself completion questionnaire methods were alsoexplored but again it seemed unlikely that thesecould successfully reach occupiers in their huts.It was only when names and home addresses of alarge proportion of the occupiers were eventu-ally traced through the Valuation Rolls that aconventional postal survey approach became fea-sible.

19 The ability to contact occupiers at theirhomes had a number of benefits :

the survey could target all occupiers of sitesabove a certain size in a cost-effective way;

if all occupiers had an opportunity to replyto a structured and objective questionnaire,

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sent to their home addresses and returned inconfidence, with a guarantee that no indi-vidual responses would be identifiable, thismight help to generate a more accurate pic-ture, particularly on any site where there werelandlord-tenant difficulties;

it would be possible to send reminders to slowresponders in order to boost response.

20 The target population was occupiers on allsites with four or more huts, a larger coveragethan the ten-hut cut-off for the site owner ele-ment .Questionnaire were sent to just under 550occupiers. These covered a total of 27 sites acrossScotland from Deeside and the Angus Coast tothe Solway and from Loch Lomond to East Lo-thian, a good spectrum of site sizes and types.

21 Although questionnaires had to be fairlybrief and largely confined to pre-coded questions,it was possible to cover all the relevant aspectsidentified at the outset. As well as factual data itwas also important to obtain open responses on anumber of issues and these had the added benefitof obtaining information and experiences in theoccupiers’ own words.

22 Completed questionnaires were eventually

received from just over one in three of those ap-proached. In reality this probably represents ahigher proportion of those who could have takenpart, i.e. excluding those who, for example, hadmoved away or who had already disposed of theirhut. One important feature of the response wasthat it was well spread across the range of sitescovered and hence can be regarded as providinga good cross-section of the hutter population.

23 The survey also helped to clarify some siteswhere it had been unclear whether they were ‘hutsites’ as initially defined (i.e. with occupiers as‘tenants’ on land in a single ownership) or thosewhere occupiers also owned, or at least had a longlease on the land on which their hut was located.Although the latter might have regarded the sur-vey as inapplicable to them - and some made thisclear in the form of written refusal - there was asurprising overall consistency of response be-tween the two categories.

24 Another important factor increasing thegeneral robustness of the response is that dataquality was good with significant amounts ofvaluable and informative comment in responsesto open questions. Being in the occupiers’ ownwords, the latter are of particular benefit in flesh-ing out the numerical bones of the survey results.