Park Homes
Debate between Annette Brooke and Anne Marie MorrisWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Annette Brooke
I thank the hon. Lady for her great support throughout our battle to secure legislation. I called this debate in the light of a huge new petition against the up-to 10% commission on the sale of park homes payable to site owners. Sonia McColl has collected signatures from some 30,000 park home residents from 956 parks across the United Kingdom and the petition will be presented to the Government in July. I have always accepted that there needs to be a reasonable return on capital to site owners, but I do not know in detail the justification for particular levels of commission. Given the strength of feeling from park home owners, it is right to put their views forward and to examine how their concerns about being overcharged for the level of service received might be addressed. The answer may lie in more transparency and accountability. Those who have signed the petition are calling for a proper debate on the fairness of the commission payment and they argue that previous inquiries into the charge have been biased and heavily reliant on information provided by park operators, rather than park home owners.
It is interesting to note that the maximum level of commission was reduced in 1983 from 15% to 10%. While there has been no change since then, the dissatisfaction of park home owners with this state of affairs has continued. The arguments for from the site owners and their representative bodies and the arguments against from park home owners and their associations remain much the same. Park home owners argue that as a site owner does nothing to earn the commission, they do not see why he or she should receive it. The argument is reinforced when occupiers highlight how they have increased the value of their homes by adding porches and other improvements at their own expense. Many park home owners claim that there has been little investment in their sites and that essential maintenance has not been carried out. Site owners say that the commission payment is part of the income, along with pitch fees and selling new mobile homes, that they have always expected to receive to make the businesses viable. They say that if the commission was reduced or abolished, they would either have to increase pitch fees accordingly to make up the difference or go out of business.
In March 2007, the Government published the responses to their consultation on the park home commission rate, which outlined options for a more transparent payment system for mobile homes. They concluded that the current level should be retained but that there should be more transparency on the payment within agreements between park home owners and site owners. An option to reduce the rate with no pitch fee increase was rejected, although it unsurprisingly received overwhelming support from park home owners.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that the pitch fee is one of the biggest problems? It can become a tool for bullying, which then overrides everything else.
Annette Brooke
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. There seems to be a complex and opaque relationship between the pitch fee and the commission payment.
A third option, to scrap the commission on the sale of a park home for new agreements only without a limitation on a compensatory increase in pitch fees, received little support. If pitch fees increase further, I concede that there is a danger for residents on relatively low and often fixed incomes.
In 2012, the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government carried out an inquiry into the park homes industry and undoubtedly contributed to the 2013 Act. It concluded that site owners should continue to receive up to 10% commission from the sale of a park home. However, as well as some oral evidence, it relied heavily on the 2007 conclusions and on an earlier paper from 2002 when reaching its own conclusion. It is misleading to say that we have evidence from as recently as 2012 on the issue.