A WHITEHAVEN woman has been convicted of setting fire to her caravan in an attempt to fraudulently claim a £20,000 insurance pay-out.

At Carlisle Crown Court, Catherine McCreadie, 59, had denied three allegations that were linked to the fire at the Inglenook Caravan Park in Lamplugh on September 14, 2021, but she was convicted after a trial.

The jury convicted her of arson, being reckless of whether life was endangered; making a false representation on October  5, 2020, when she attempted to make a false claim through her insurance; and committing an act with intent to pervert the course of justice – by lying to the police about the fire.

During the trial, Inglenook's warden Christine Spires said she was woken up at around 4am on September 14, 2020 by another resident banging on her door to tell her that McCreadie's caravan was on fire.

Mrs Spires woke her husband Richard, the site's groundsman, who moved gas canisters that were near to the burning caravan. "I was absolutely terrified that these bottles are going to go up," Mrs Spires told the jury.

Prosecutor Tim Evans said that if the fire had spread to those gas canisters, the effect could have been "catastrophic".

The court heard that all of the fire extinguishers on the site, as well as some from a neighbouring caravan park, were used by people staying on the site to contain the fire before firefighters arrived and put it out.

A Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service investigator said the evidence led him to believe that the fire was deliberately started.

Mr Evans said that McCreadie was in debt "both generally in her life and at the caravan park", and she had been served an eviction notice from Inglenook. "She was in real financial difficulties," he said.

An insurance pay out would have allowed her to kill two birds with one stone, getting the caravan off the site and generating herself some money, said the prosecutor.

In her evidence, McCreadie denied telling a a woman at the caravan park that she would burn down the caravan. Asked how a lamp in the caravan had come into contact with newspapers, McCreadie, who said the carvan was left unlocked, replied: “Someone must have got in there and knocked it over.”

Mr Evans asked the defendant about an alleged conversation in which a woman at the site recalled the defendant saying: “The only way it’s going off is if it [the caravan] is burned down.”

McCreadie said the woman had lied. The defendant, who was granted bail, will be sentenced on April 6 at the crown court.