Pays yer Money and takes yer chances
The GA industry in the UK is not ripping anyone off, it is just charging the rate it needs to cover the costs.
The biggest costs to GA is tax if one sort or another, the reason that we have higher taxes than the USA is that we have a workable social system that is by and large free. If I have an accident or ill health then you treated for free, the Daily Mail will tell you that the NHS is rubbish but following the very rapid treatment that my wife got when it was discovered she had cancer I have a much higher (and more balanced) opinion on the NHS than the Daily Mail.
If I was in the USA the medical insurance I could buy would only cover so much, the guy who ran my FE course in the USA was still working at 67 and had to sell his pension fund & house to pay for his wifes cancer treatment, he was left after a full career in the airlines with NO money for his old age and no help from the state likely.
On the whole I would rather pay the taxes in Europe and know that I will not end up in a small appartment in the bad end of town if one of my loved ones gets sick.
That having been said you could have not picked a more expensive place Shoreham !