Beach huts - 20th August 2021

The UK has some colourful beach huts. People on holiday invite friends to their beach huts. They can sit in them in bad weather.

Some beach hut owners make special groups. Melanie Whitehead is the leader of one group.

Melanie Whitehead: "This is my beach hut. It's a fairly standard beach hut. Most huts have a cooker for making the all important cup of tea. It comes into its own when it's a horrible day because obviously I can put windows in, I've got spare jumpers and things. And I can, yep, snuggle in here, look at the view and forget about the world really."

Beach huts are very popular today. In the past, beach huts were cheap. But Covid-19 made them expensive.

Melanie Whitehead: "So, the pandemic, this really is very unusual. I mean, we almost saw prices increasing, you know, week on week."

Sarah Stimson has a company in Walton-on-the-Naze. She rents beach huts to people on holiday. But many people want them. This makes them expensive.

Sarah Stimson : "But there is also an element that lots of people have beach huts in their families and then never sell them. So, the availability of beach huts is actually quite small. There's much, much more demand than there is in terms of availability."

People often remember beach huts from their childhood. Many people had play huts in their gardens.

Sarah Stimson: "It's a bit like having a grown-up Wendy house on the beach, isn't it? So I think grown-ups quite like it for that reason."