Britain's beach hut boom

A peculiarly British tradition, many seaside resorts boast multicoloured beach huts adorning the seafront. Designed to shield you from inclement weather or baking heat, these versatile huts are ideal for holidaymakers. They serve as spots for snuggling up with a book or flinging open the doors and congregating with family and friends.

Chairperson of a beach hut owners' association, Melanie Whitehead gives us the grand tour.

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."

The increasing allure of beach huts has seen prices rise year on year. Owning one could set you back £40,000 today, compared to £8,000 a decade ago. According to Melanie, this sharp increase has only been accelerated by the pandemic.

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

Sarah Stimson founded a beach hut rental company, providing an alternative route for people to partake in this quintessentially British seaside passion. She puts forward another reason why their prices have risen.

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."

Sarah also suggests that the appeal of these bright beach huts is rooted in childhood. Many adults would have played in similar huts in their gardens as children.

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."

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