Baroness Laing of Elderslie
Main Page: Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Conservative - Life peer)
Peter Aldous
My hon. Friend summarises well the situation and the challenge we face.
The exploitation takes a variety of forms: the deliberate miscalculation of pitch fee increases and utility charges; poor, or even a complete lack of, site maintenance, as is the case at the Waveney residential park in Beccles in my constituency; and the abuse of the right to approve new buyers, known as sale blocking, which rogue site owners often use as a device to buy park homes at knock-down prices before selling them for windfall profits. There has even been a case involving terrified home owners being forced to sell their home, which had a market value of £80,000, for £1—a peppercorn.
The existing legal framework, which dates back over 50 years, is outdated, does not deter unscrupulous site owners and does not provide local authorities with effective powers. Local authorities have a limited ability to revoke licences when site conditions are being breached and, indeed, the granting of licences is at present little more than a rubber-stamping exercise. Moreover, the fines that local authorities can impose to deter operators are inadequate, and some site owners will risk the threat of small financial sanctions rather than maintain sites properly.
Demands for reform are sometimes made on the back of an isolated case, but that is not the situation with regard to the Bill. The case is compelling and overwhelming. The Department for Communities and Local Government carried out a consultation earlier this year, to which there were over 600 responses, and the Communities and Local Government Committee has carried out a full and comprehensive inquiry and come forward with recommendations, many of which are included in the Bill. An issue that I found particularly disturbing about that inquiry was that, of the 250 people who made representations, some asked for their names to be withheld as they were scared about possible reprisals.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on getting the Bill this far. In gathering evidence, has he found examples, as other Members have, of unscrupulous site owners deliberately using bullying tactics so that people are afraid? I have seen that in my constituency again and again over many years. One individual in particular—I dare to name him—Mr Sines, owns many parks across the country and has engaged in exactly the sort of behaviour my hon. Friend has just described, and has done so for over a decade.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
I am absolutely delighted to follow the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous). I am very pleased that he has chosen this subject for his Bill, and I hope that it will progress through Second Reading and Committee and then become law. Like many others in this House, I have campaigned on the issue for many years, as did my predecessor, Harry Barnes—I pay tribute to him—who was MP for North East Derbyshire for 18 years. I continued the campaign when I took over seven years ago. That shows how long it has been going on and for how long this injustice has been building.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), without whom we would not have got this far. She has campaigned tirelessly, along with her constituent, Sonia McColl, to whom great tribute must also be paid. She has been a lifeline to many people; without her, their lives would have been even more miserable than they are today. I thank her very much. I will not steal the hon. Lady’s thunder by saying any more.
The right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), who was until recently the Housing Minister, and had been since the general election, did a lot to take the Bill forward and gave great deal of support to those of us in the all-party group on mobile homes who have been campaigning to make these proposals a reality. I am very grateful for that.
I will not go into the details of the Bill, because it will, we hope, go into Committee, where it can be scrutinised in detail. Instead, I will explain a bit of the history of why we have arrived at this point. There are very good reasons why. It is no surprise given that the previous legislation on which the sector is based is called the Mobile Homes Act 1983 and the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960. That indicates a complete misunderstanding of the sector. These units may not be made of bricks and mortar, but they are people’s homes. They do not move—they are static—and they are homes like everybody else’s. To call them mobile homes or caravans is completely to misunderstand what this is about. Interestingly, a lot of people who do live in homes of bricks and mortar have joined the campaign because they can see the injustice of saying that somebody who does not have such a home should have to live under completely different rules. It is very important that we support the progress of the Bill to make sure that they enjoy the same privileges as those living in homes of bricks and mortar.
In previous generations, a long time ago, the people who owned park home sites were decent people who looked after the sites and made them idyllic places to live in. Their houses were usually adjacent to the sites. They grew up on the sites, and their children grew up on them, inherited them, and carried on looking after the people who lived there—all aged 50 or over, and almost always a lot older. A couple will downsize their home and move into one of these fabulous small units to live with like-minded people in small semi-rural communities; it is idyllic. Then the husband or wife dies and the person who is left becomes very frail and vulnerable. That is where the site owner comes into their own by looking after that person. For example, in the past, site owners charging people who live in the homes for their electricity, water and gas have bought in bulk in order to pass the savings on to them. However, that benefit has recently been abused.
In the snows of last year and the year before, people often became isolated in their units; they could not leave their site because it was not well maintained and the paths had not been cleared. In one case, because these people are very elderly and frail, somebody knocked on the site owner’s door and asked him to put some grit into the grit bins, saying that they would do the gritting themselves. The previous owner had always put grit into the bins. The site owner said “Grit bins? I didn’t realise we had them”, and took the bins away. Next day, outside his unit, he was selling bags of grit at twice the market rate. People bought that grit because they had nowhere else to go—they could not leave the site because they were too old and frail and scared of walking outside. Instead, they bought the grit at twice the price. That shows exactly what these site owners can be like.
The generation of people who used to care for and look after sites passed them on to their children, who did not want to look after them and sold them. They sold them on to what seems to be a generation of people who not only do not care but are trying to screw the very last penny that they can out of elderly and vulnerable people. Those people therefore need our protection. Because they live in such isolated communities it is difficult for people who do not live on such sites, and have not been there, to see exactly what is happening.
Mrs Laing
I agree with every word that the hon. Lady has said, and she has described exactly what happens on both park home sites in my constituency. Does she agree that the reason why the law has not worked up to now is that owners such as those she describes are deliberately getting around the law and finding a legal loophole to make the lives of park home residents a misery, simply for the sake of making money? They are using disgusting bullying tactics to do that, which is why the Bill is so important. Previous Governments have tried to close the loophole and failed, but today we must succeed.
Natascha Engel
That is absolutely right. The hon. Lady says that owners are making money, and indeed they are making considerable amounts. I know of a lady whose husband died, and she became frail and vulnerable and wanted to move into a home. She put her unit up for sale, and the owner blocked every sale. She was an elderly and vulnerable lady, but he used to go round in the middle of the night and rattle the windows. That might not seem to Members the most frightening thing, but a rattling on the windows in the middle of the night was terrifying for her. The old lady phoned the police, but they have better things to do than to go round and see somebody who has had their windows rattled in the middle of the night. That poor woman ended up absolutely terrified and wanting to do anything she could to leave her home. When a letter from the site owner popped through her letterbox, offering her £10 for a unit that was worth £100,000, she took it and left, and she died very soon afterwards.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
We have heard some moving stories this morning about what has happened to people in our constituencies as a result of the deliberate, unscrupulous bullying actions of people who have taken over park homes that were previously idyllic places in which to live with a view to using them as a money-making exercise, with no regard whatever for the people living there. I pay tribute to the people who live in park homes in Breach Barns park and Woodbine Close park in my constituency—beautiful places on the edge of Epping forest. I would like to name the park home residents who have worked so hard to try to ensure justice, but I cannot; they have asked me not to mention their names, because they are afraid of the actions of Mr Sines, the man who owns those parks, who has deliberately, over a period of more than 10 years, made the lives of the people who live there a misery.
It is brilliant that this Bill is before us today. Previous Governments have tried and failed to close the loopholes in the law, because the owners of park homes sites who are deliberately flouting the law and using the loopholes can well afford to pay lawyers to get around the law. Today, we can give power to the people who need it—our local authorities and others, who will use it on behalf of our constituents, who need our protection.
I should particularly like to pay tribute to another person who lives in my constituency, Lord Graham of Edmonton, who has been a great champion of this cause, and to those, including my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who have worked so hard for the all-party group. I wish the Bill every success.