Annette Brooke
Main Page: Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat - Mid Dorset and North Poole)
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House notes that there are approximately 1,800 park home sites in England and Wales; further notes that current legislation permits a minority of park home site owners to cause great distress, damage to property and danger to health of park home residents; welcomes the Government’s intention to lay before the House secondary legislation to transfer jurisdiction for park homes to the Residential Property Tribunal Service; but calls on the Government to review the case for establishing a fit and proper person criterion for park home site owners and to bring forward relevant legislation at the earliest opportunity to prevent in particular park home site owners interfering with the sale of a park home without good reason.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting the motion before us for debate today. I am particularly pleased that Back Benchers from across the country have the opportunity to put the case for more protection for a group of very vulnerable people. I also thank the noble Lord Graham for his unstinting support for park home owners over many years.
I particularly thank my constituent, Sonia McColl, from the Silent Woman park home in my constituency for organising and motivating park home owners from all over the country to speak out about their bad experiences. During this year, she organised a massive petition that was presented to 10 Downing street, after which there was a meeting here in the House. More recently, as part of her “justice for park home owners” campaign, well over 100 predominantly older people demonstrated in Old Palace yard with banners, photographs of park homes being torn down and some very good chanting. There was a mass lobby of individual MPs and the day culminated in an extremely well attended meeting in the House, when we sadly heard similar stories from people from all over the country. I thank the Minister for coming and listening on that occasion. I also acknowledge the help and support given by the park home owner associations and welcome the fact that so many MPs are here today to support their constituents. Many other hon. Members have expressed regret that they are unable to attend today. However, they wholeheartedly endorse the call for the Government to take more action.
If we look back over the years, the plight of some park home owners has been raised on many occasions and amendments have been made to legislation. However, some of the worst problems have not been addressed. I was interested to read the Adjournment debate initiated by the former Member for Suffolk Coastal in March 2009. He said:
“I have rarely been as angry about a matter as I am about this case…most of us came into Parliament to oppose bullying. Deep down, what we dislike most is those who are strong bullying the weak.”—[Official Report, 2 March 2009; Vol. 488, c. 701-704.]
The issue raised was the buying and selling of park homes, to which I shall return later. The former Member for Teignbridge secured an Adjournment debate in March 2008, which also covered the buying and selling issues and the need for a fit and proper person rule. I hope that today will be a landmark moment and that the Government will commit to do everything in their power to address these long-standing and well documented issues.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
At the Lakeside park in Bridgwater, we are dealing with blackmail, threats and individuals who are determined to get these people out of their houses. Surely the hon. Lady agrees that the matter has become a national scandal? Right across the country, the lives and livelihoods of these people—in some cases the most vulnerable and needy in society—are being threatened because of this anomaly.
Annette Brooke
I certainly agree that the matter is a national scandal. If we consider the spread of constituencies represented by hon. Members here today, we can see that it truly is a national issue.
There are approximately 85,000 park homes on 2,000 sites in England, and 5,000 homes on 100 sites in Wales. Park home living can provide an idyllic lifestyle. Park homes are often located on the edge of open countryside and they provide a useful addition to the housing supply, particularly for many thousands of mainly retired people. In addition, they provide smaller homes with lower maintenance costs and lower council tax payments; they are on one level, and they occupy small plots within a larger site. There is the opportunity for a really good community to develop in a positive way in the vast majority of sites.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
I commend the hon. Lady for championing this cause and securing the debate. Although the tribunal will deal with many of the unscrupulous things that those who live on these sites have to put up with, is not the real issue that of being able to dispose of, or sell, a park home? In such cases, is almost too late for the individual concerned by the time the matter goes to tribunal. Sonia and everyone involved must be commended for raising that over and above what the Government are doing on the tribunals.
Annette Brooke
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I shall return to that in more detail, but today we are discussing the crunch of the matter.
Park homes can provide an idyllic community, but community strength can develop in a different way on the minority of sites where there is an unscrupulous operator, who may well bully, intimidate, harass and even defraud vulnerable people. People in adversity will often stick together. However, in some cases, that sense of community cannot develop because park home owners can become too frightened to be seen even talking to their neighbours. I must emphasise that the points that I shall make are directed at a minority of park home site owners. There are excellent, well managed park home sites in my constituency, and I do not wish to suggest that all site owners engage in bad practices.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I add my voice of commendation to those who have praised the hon. Lady’s excellent work. Even some of the bigger firms that run park home estates, such as the one I have in my constituency, are not above a bit of sharp practice. I shall give two examples that she might like to consider. There is a great reluctance to recognise residents’ associations—for example, there have been demands for lists of all the people who are going to sign up rather than merely requesting sight of a list and people not then being able to take it away, which I believe is the legal position. In one case, there was even a claim that a letter sent to the park home owner complaining about certain conditions libelled the park home owner. Of course, one cannot libel someone by sending a letter to that person if one does not publish it to anyone else. However, ordinary people might not be able to cope with such tactics without the assistance of their MPs.
Annette Brooke
I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend’s points. I endorse the point that residents’ associations can in principle be formed, but that they are in practice often obstructed. That relates to my point about people being frightened to be seen talking to others on the park home site.
There are good site owners. However, a minority of site owners make legislation difficult and I hope that the outcome of this debate will be a stiffened resolve to tackle the issues, rather than just saying that they are too difficult. I am extremely pleased that the Government have committed to bringing in secondary legislation to transfer jurisdiction for park homes to the Residential Property Tribunal Service. That will undoubtedly help solve some of the problems that park home owners have been faced with and will remove the need for an expensive court process in many cases.
A recent case I am trying to deal with could potentially be solved through that route. Let me mention it briefly. A park home was purchased in May this year. The new owner wanted to make improvements and applied for an insulation grant for her mobile home from the local authority, and the local authority granted it. There is a clause in the site agreement with the site owner of this particular site that any works to the exterior of a mobile home require the express permission of the site owner. Somewhere along the line, the site owner has requested that the park home owner agrees to her home being re-sited. She has refused to do that and the site owner will not give permission for the insulation to take place. The local authority has confirmed to me that there is no technical reason why the work on the home cannot be carried out in its current position. The tribunal offers the opportunity for both sides to put their case and for all aspects to be considered. Unfortunately for my constituency, this route is not yet open, which is yet another reason why we cannot delay.
Last winter, the electricity supply on a site was faulty on the coldest night of the year. It was not restored in a reasonable time, and an 84-year-old was taken to hospital with hypothermia the next day. Purbeck district council, bravely for a small council, took the site owner to court. The site owner was found guilty and fined £1,000 with £6,000 costs. We could say that we won the battle, but not the war. My worry is that more bullying may follow.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. The fact that so many Members are here on a day when Christmas is not far away shows the strength of feeling about this issue among constituents and their MPs. I entirely understand what she says about bullying following comments made by residents of Palma park, a park home site in my constituency. The hon. Lady talked about cold nights; in my constituency, the local site owner allowed the gas to run out, which meant that on one of the coldest nights of the year the residents did not have any fuel. The hon. Lady also mentioned the spirit of community in adversity. At the moment, the residents are having to get together to clear the cesspit because the owner will not do so. I entirely agree that this situation cannot be allowed to continue for the many thousands of park home owners across the country.
Annette Brooke
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am sure that we will be continually reinforcing the same points.
I sincerely believe that we need a fit-and-proper-person law, which local authorities will welcome.
Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I add my congratulations to the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She and I work well in many other areas, and I pay tribute to her work on this. We need not only justice for park home owners in their campaign but confidence for people who may think about living in park homes in future but might be terrified of doing so. In my constituency, we often hear about the idea of affordable housing, whatever that means in practice, but these are, in many cases, truly affordable homes. Many people who could have the idyllic lifestyle that park homes can afford may be terrified about moving into that environment because of some of the things that are being mentioned. I hope that that will be one of the things that comes out of this debate.
Annette Brooke
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is indeed the case that this should provide an idyllic lifestyle and a useful addition to the housing supply.
Somebody said to me that we could make a comparison with the employment of a warden at an elderly persons’ dwelling site, because such a warden would be required to have certain characteristics. I am not suggesting that a site owner equates to a warden in any way, but the fit and proper person rule should be taken into account.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I welcome this debate; I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing it and on her tireless work on the matter. Does she recognise that there are concerns about fit and proper person criteria given, for example, the utter failure of the Football Association to make them mean anything? Does she agree that the Government must spell out exactly what those criteria are?
Annette Brooke
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am not pretending that this is easy to achieve, but I am trying to get a clear timetable to make progress on it. There is already work in progress. The previous Government had a statutory instrument ready to run, so some consultation has already taken place. We have the tribunal coming on board. That will provide evidence when people bring their cases about fit and proper persons and enable us to work together on all the issues that are arising.
I want to concentrate on malpractice in the buying and selling of park homes. In 2009, I presented a ten-minute rule Bill on this issue that aimed to prevent unjustified interference by a site owner when residents sell their park home. A park home site owner might reasonably wish to meet a prospective buyer, or at least to have a reference supplied, but an interview without the seller or an independent witness present can provide opportunities for rogue site owners to make misleading or untrue statements. Examples of such statements from across the country include: “The home is in poor condition”; “The home is not worth the price you’re paying”; “The home will have to be moved to another pitch next year”; “I have a right to ask the court to let me take the home off in five years”; and “The park is being developed and the home will have to be moved.”
Alternatively, the prospective buyer might be intimidated by real or implied threats and not want to be involved with the site owner in any way. The prospective buyer might understandably decide that he or she does not want to live on a park run in such a way, and/or by such an unpleasant person, and the sale will fall through. After that has been repeated a few times, the seller eventually sells the home to the site owner for a token sum. In each case, there are no witnesses and the prospective buyer is usually unwilling to give a witness statement, as he or she simply wants to get away from the park as quickly as possible. The seller does not usually go to court because there is no witness statement and the buyer is lost anyway.
The incentive for the site owner is to buy the home for a small sum, remove it from the park, site a new and possibly bigger home on the pitch, and sell it, thereby making a clear profit of perhaps £100,000. Rogue site owners currently have the ability to sabotage sales and can rely on the fact that many people who move to park homes are frail, vulnerable, elderly and easily intimidated. It seems reasonable for a site owner to be able to check out a prospective buyer, but how can we stop the abuse and possible fraud currently taking place? My Bill suggested that there should be an independent witness present at such meetings. However, that would not tackle phone conversations, so I can see that this is quite complicated.
In one case, constituents of mine were offered £81,000 by a prospective purchaser on the open market. The site owner had made an earlier offer of £15,000. A meeting took place between the prospective buyer and the site owner, who wrote to my constituent on 4 October 2007 to say:
“Thank you for your letter...introducing the above young lady to me and seeking my approval for her to buy the above home. Since taking over the park in 1999 we have always promoted the location as a retirement one for people over the age of 55. With that in mind I am unable to agree to”
the lady
“purchasing your home”.
On 5 October, the next day, a letter was issued to all residents on the park that said:
“Since taking over the Park in 1999 we have always promoted the location as a retirement one for people over the age of 55. My legal advisors have informed that this should be formalised within the Park Rules and I now write to advise you of the addition of the following rule…The Park is for retired/semi retired persons over the age of 55.”
So the rule was introduced after the refusal. The letter continued:
“In the event of anyone disagreeing with this rule please let me have your written objection within 28 days of the date of this letter.”
Representatives of the residents association on the site tell me that the prospective purchaser was originally prepared to make a statement about conversations with the site owner.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
While I entirely agree with the need to find a better solution for the buying and selling of park homes, we also need something to help with dispute resolution. In my constituency, I came across a situation regarding residents wishing to insulate their park homes, which was being resisted by the site owner on grounds of the aesthetics of the park. I looked at that and saw that there were arguments in both directions. I then discovered that there was a conflict of interest because the owner was supplying gas to the residents at a premium price. This raises enormous questions. We need a dispute resolution system to deal with such ongoing problems that will give confidence to park home owners and certainty to operators about how they can act with regard to the residents.
Annette Brooke
I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. As he says, certainty and a clear understanding of the rules, and a requirement not to change them overnight, would be a big step forward. The residential property tribunal will enable both sides to put their case. I do not believe that it will solve the problem with buying and selling, but it is definitely a first step, and this debate will ensure that the next steps go ahead subsequently.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Lady. There were debates on this matter in the Parliament before she was elected, which were secured by the former Member for Bridgend, Win Griffiths, who had Trecco bay in his constituency. She follows a fine tradition. The big problem is the conflict of interests. The main interest of many site owners is selling new properties. That drives every other decision and informs the way they deal with people. That is why they invent new rules every six or 12 months that make it possible for them to sell another property for £80,000, £90,000, £100,000 or £120,000.
Annette Brooke
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is probably time for me to be balanced. We must accept that the site owner needs a return on their capital to invest in the park and make it a good place to live. We need to get the right balance in the legislation that allows for investment, while ensuring that no extortionate demands are made of people. I think that the House has the will to make that happen.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
May I add to the bouquets under which my hon. Friend is being buried for securing this debate? I also acknowledge the Backbench Business Committee for sponsoring the debate. We are bringing Parliament closer to the people by debating the issues that concern them. Does she agree that reasonable, respectable park owners have nothing to worry about in the extension of the rights of park home residents, because residents want to have sensible rules about their ground rent and maintenance requirements to ensure that their communities are strong and safe?
Annette Brooke
Good site owners want the business to be cleaned up, because the stories that we hear reflect on them and their ability to run their parks. We must take that on board.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
My hon. Friend not only has huge support today—all of us who attended the lobby pledged to help her take these matters beyond this debate—but if the motion is passed, there is a general will that the Communities and Local Government Committee should be asked to consider this matter. If it takes evidence, there is a willingness to help her and the Government to legislate on all the issues together, not just on the narrow matter that is in the pipeline. I want her to know that we want the law changed to cover all the abuses to which she has alluded.
Annette Brooke
I thank my hon. Friend, because we have to pursue this issue and not just let it go quiet for a year. We have to push at every opportunity.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend and underline the comments that have been made by all hon. Members about her work. The shift from the county court to the tribunal is important, but many people will face difficulty in using the tribunal process, given that legal aid is not generally available for tribunal services. Does she agree that strong guidance is needed to provide understanding for those who want to use the tribunal process?
Annette Brooke
There was an enlightening presentation on the future tribunal service at the mobile homes all-party group. We were reassured that the process should not cost a great deal of money for the ordinary person and that the cases and outcomes would be published. It would be extremely useful if those were published on the internet, because that would provide evidence for the next stage of legislation. My main concern is that the right to go to a tribunal will not solve the fundamental problems, because potential purchasers will just disappear when the difficulties are raised.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
I thank the hon. Lady for her great generosity in giving way to so many hon. Members in such a short space of time. The current court process can be prohibitively expensive and many unscrupulous site owners delay in the courts to thwart those who are pursuing them. Does she agree that it is fundamental and vital that the tribunal processes cases swiftly and mediates without delay in all cases?
Annette Brooke
The all-party group made that point clearly and we will monitor the issue. We do not need to wait for the Select Committee to do so.
I shall return to the example that I was giving. We went to the police, because it is a case of fraud. There were enormous difficulties in getting the police to accept that it was not just a civil matter. We now have a clear understanding with Dorset police and matters have moved forward. The case was eventually taken up, although not wholeheartedly. It was not pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service. Even though there are clear examples of fraud, it is difficult to deal with them as such.
I have been putting the case for long enough. I commend the motion to the House so that we can achieve justice for park home owners.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
I support the motion and, like many other Members, I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on moving it.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) pointed out, there are many park home sites up and down the country and many park home owners. In England alone, there are 85,000 park home owners, spread across 2,000 sites. In the main, as the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) eloquently stressed, the sites are run well; they are good places to live. Park homes are comfortable and relatively easy to maintain. They are relatively low cost and affordable. Most of them—certainly those in my constituency—are in pleasant locations. They are nice places to live. Whether park home sites are well or poorly run, they have a strong sense of community.
On a minority of sites, residents face many great problems. In my constituency, the spectrum of problems ranges from sites that are somewhat poorly managed to those where there are blatant breaches of health and safety regulations, many along the lines highlighted by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller). In my constituency, at the uglier end of the spectrum, there are examples of intimidation, particularly of vulnerable and elderly people. Intimidation often affects the mental health of elderly residents and can, on occasion, result in great financial loss, as we have heard from many Members this afternoon. I echo the comments made by many Members, and congratulate Sonia McColl on her justice campaign, on pressing so firmly on this important issue and on the work and energy that went into arranging the lobby of Parliament on 3 November.
There are a number of challenging issues, many of which have been raised this afternoon, relating to the operation of park home sites. We have heard much about the importance of the approval of the buyer stage, when an unscrupulous park site owner can put people off and use the rules to make sure that the park home owner does not achieve fair value for their property. In 1990-91, a Department of the Environment survey showed that 25% of park home owners expected problems with the sales process in the future. Of that 25%, some 51% felt that the site owner or the owning company would be the cause of the problems.
Mrs McColl is particularly keen that the approval of the buyer stage should take place in the presence of a solicitor or at a solicitor’s office. I think we should be slightly cautious here, because I am not convinced that that requirement, in and of itself, will solve the problem, and it will add to the cost of the transactions. But where a wrong has been done there should be quick redress at low cost, and substantial damages should be available to those pursuing unscrupulous site owners.
The second area of sale that I wish to address is that of what I would term the forced sale, in which the unscrupulous site owner intimidates and pressurises a resident off the site. The reason for that is clear; as many hon. Members have said, once that home is gone, perhaps a larger home can be placed on that site and profits will follow. My understanding is that some of the problems relate to the Mobile Homes Act 1983, whereby site owners can sometimes claim that an existing home has a detrimental effect on the amenity of the site. That point was raised by Shelter, whose mobile home unit looked into the issue. I therefore urge the Minister to pay careful attention to that aspect of the Act.
Several hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert), have raised the issue of sales commission on park homes that are sold. I know that many park home owners feel it is inherently unfair to have to pay 10% of the value of their property on sale. They will argue that the site owner may have contributed nothing to the sale, and in many circumstances the owners of those homes have enhanced them at their own expense, adding to their value.
We should proceed with caution, however, because in order to make a profit a park home operator will look at all the revenue streams that go into the business, of which commission on sales is but one. It is quite conceivable that if that were reduced or removed, pitch fees would be higher, as the consultants Berkeley Hanover suggested in its 2001 report. It suggested that pitch fees might go up by 20% to 32% if commission was removed altogether. It is the case that where commissions have been reduced in the past from 15% to 10% due to legislation, there has been evidence that pitch fees have increased.
The second danger of removing commissions is that it might inflate the price of what at the moment are relatively—I stress, relatively—affordable homes, and that would be a detrimental move. It is very important that we keep the up-front affordability of these homes for individuals who may wish to buy them in the future. Indeed, the Shelter report did not recommend any reduction in the commission rate.
Several hon. Members have spoken about site conditions and licensing. Licensing was introduced under the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, which gave local authorities the ability to impose conditions on site licences, and also the power to enforce those conditions. But it did not confer on local authorities any duty to enforce conditions on recalcitrant site owners. Those conditions, on which enforcement action can be taken, would include requirements not only on the spacing of the homes across the site, for example, but on the provision of—sometimes vital—amenities on the site. So it is very important that the Minister looks closely, as I am sure he and his colleagues are doing, at licensing and whether we should make it a duty of local authorities to intervene where there are significant breaches of those licences.
We should also look closely at local authorities’ right to refuse or revoke the site owner’s licence if there is good cause, as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) said. In those circumstances, if there were a revocation, we would need to ensure that the local authority had a clear strategy for providing the services and ensuring that the site continued to run in a safe, decent and reasonable manner.
I urge the Minister to look at giving local authorities the ability to take emergency remedial action when things do not happen appropriately on a site, and to charge the site owner for any remedial action that is taken. Local authorities could be given the authority to charge for licences to cover some of the costs of them, and, when there are appeals in the system on such matters, they might be handled by the residential property tribunal.
Much has been rightly said in this debate about the fit and proper person qualification, which was a strong recommendation of the park homes working group. There is no doubt that the park homes business is distinctly different from many others. It is not like running a shop or a pub, whereby, if one is rude to customers or runs the business badly, one can expect to see profits diminish and to go out of business. Site owners effectively have captive consumers and people whose lives they can and, as we have heard in many instances this afternoon, do make a misery.
Given how the economics of the business work, we should not be surprised by such abuse. There is a premium to be gained by bullying people and by pushing somebody out of their home inappropriately, because there are profits to be made as a consequence. The whole market has built into it the dynamics for abuse of one form or another.
I know that the Housing Minister is thinking about the issue very carefully, but I urge the Minister before us to consider seriously a fit and proper person qualification. One objection to the approach is that it might be complicated and difficult, but we already apply it to people who own houses in multiple occupation, so some local authorities already have experience in exactly that area.
Some Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), have said that residents associations have been quite effective in dealing with difficult situations on park home sites, and I welcome the Mobile Homes Act 1983 (Amendment of Schedule 1) (England) Order 2006, which permits such associations to be set up and, indeed, requires site owners to recognise them, subject to certain conditions, including one whereby more than 50% of residents on a site must become members. The Government would do well to encourage at every turn, with whatever legislative changes they bring in, such residents associations and to give them authority wherever they possibly can.
Annette Brooke
I should like to report on some further good practice by Purbeck district council, which has set up a forum for park home owners, so that they can go and share their issues. That is a very good way of backing up residents associations.
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Lady for that helpful and informative intervention. I am grateful and pay tribute to Buckingham Orchards Residents Community Association in my constituency, which has done a great deal and fought hard to improve conditions on its site. I shall certainly take the hon. Lady’s suggestion of a forum and such activity to that association to see whether it might benefit from that.
Finally, dispute resolution at the moment typically means going through the county courts, and doing so not just at great expense, but often in the face of numerous delays, because unscrupulous site owners are adept at stringing things out and making things difficult at every turn. We have all heard the stories in which site owners fail to turn up, give a reason and there has to be a re-hearing. They just wear people out, which is why I particularly welcome the Government’s commitment to a residential property tribunal. However, it is absolutely essential that such a tribunal is quick to deal with grievances, that there is a minimum of delay involved and that it is not expensive to use. On 14 July, in referring to residential property tribunals, the Minister for Housing stated:
“This will mean that park home residents will be able to take action to resolve disputes with site owners, without being restricted by the prospect of facing large legal costs.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 28WS.]
That is absolutely critical. We are dealing with people who are among the least advantaged in our society and cost must be driven down to give them a route to justice.
We should also toughen up on fines and give the tribunal real teeth. At the moment, a breach of a site licence carries a maximum fine of £2,500. In many cases, that is simply not enough to deter the kind of activity that we have been debating this afternoon. I urge the Minister to consider whether there should be an escalation of fines for repeat offences, because we are aware that some site owners do the same things over and over again. Those people should be penalised more heavily each time around.
Many of the things I have raised and that other hon. Members have touched upon may not be achieved simply through secondary legislation. We may need primary legislation. I hope that the Government and the Minister have the political will to ensure that the time required to push forward these changes is made available. We need to act to remove the last refuge of Rachmanism in this country, because that is what we are dealing with; we need to act to stand up for the vulnerable and the elderly who suffer in the circumstances that I and many others have described; and we need to act for the many self-reliant, proud and decent park home residents, who ask nothing more than that they are treated with fairness, dignity and respect.
Annette Brooke
I shall make a brief concluding statement. I should like to thank all the Members who helped to secure the debate, because we had to convince people that we would have enough speakers today. I have been having sleepless nights about it, and I thank everyone for turning up today, especially at this time on this Thursday afternoon. I welcome the cross-party support for the motion; it is absolutely vital and it makes me feel positive that we can move forward. I hope that it will also make the campaigners feel positive. We have talked about our proud and dignified home owners, and about the fact that park homes are homes, not just chattels. That is incredibly important. Those people deserve better; the words “the forgotten lost” summed up what we have been debating this afternoon.
I am all too aware that we need a sustainable, flourishing industry, but it cannot flourish or achieve its full potential for providing this much-needed housing unless we have a way of addressing the many issues that we have been talking about today. Speed and transparency have been referred to, and they are both important, because time is running out. I welcome the first step of establishing the residential property tribunals, but I want to see concurrent planning for the next stage, because it is clear that we need more.
I wavered as I listened to the Minister’s response. First, I thought, “Oh, that’s good”, then I thought, “Oh, that’s not so good.” It is a pity that we could not have delivered a Christmas present to our park home campaigners today, and that they will have to wait until the new year for the Minister’s statement. I trust that they will not have to wait until the spring, and that the statement will be made early in the new year, because we need a response to these long-term problems that have now been raised so many times in the House. I accept that we need to strike the right balance, but that is no excuse for doing nothing. We must have action!
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes that there are approximately 1,800 park home sites in England and Wales; further notes that current legislation permits a minority of park home site owners to cause great distress, damage to property and danger to health of park home residents; welcomes the Government’s intention to lay before the House secondary legislation to transfer jurisdiction for park homes to the Residential Property Tribunal Service; but calls on the Government to review the case for establishing a fit and proper person criterion for park home site owners and to bring forward relevant legislation at the earliest opportunity to prevent in particular park home site owners interfering with the sale of a park home without good reason.