Residents of Leisure Park Homes

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) for raising this issue, and endorse much of what she has said. The holiday park homes in my constituency bring in hundreds of thousands of holiday makers, and their revenue, every year. Those homes are extraordinarily well managed; they produce a very high-quality consumer product; and a huge amount of reinvestment takes place every year to keep that product at its high standard. I am always aware of the problems that I have had with park homes in the past, but those were largely—in fact, exclusively—confined to the residential homes in my constituency. I have never had any difficulty with the holiday homes; they are all extremely reputable organisations.

With respect to the residential homes, by and large, I have again had little difficulty, particularly when they are operated by public limited companies in which there is someone who people can deal with. There are, however, a number of homes run by—I am struggling to find the delicate words to use—people who have neither the social nor managerial skills to make a success of it, if I can put it that way. It is sometimes difficult to contact anyone representing those park homes, and that is the area in which we need to come up with a better form of intervention. The question of “fit and proper person” has been raised, and it is an appropriate question to ask.

One of the issues that many residents of residential homes raise with me is that of the 10% selling-on fee. It is extraordinary to me that people enter into contractual arrangements without advice and without realising what they are letting themselves in for. Nevertheless, if that is to be addressed, we have to recognise that realistically, it is part of the economics of running a park home and we would therefore expect that revenue to be paid for elsewhere in these people’s site fees. However, for park home owners of the nature that I have described, there is always an incentive to increase the turnover of sales by making vulnerable people’s lives miserable so that they move on. Removing that incentive is a clear argument for addressing the issue of the 10% fee.