Park Homes

Gordon Henderson Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

So far Members have concentrated on park home owners who have all-year-round occupation, but we should not forget those who have restricted occupation rights and who also have different problems. I want to address some of those problems.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler), I need to be careful about what I say, because there is a court case pending involving a particular site owner. The basic facts are these. One of the residents of the park alleges that the owner sold a mobile home for £80,000 under a leasehold agreement. I have seen a copy of the agreement, and it clearly states that the resident is entitled to all-year-round occupation. However, the resident has now been told to leave the site because it is allowed to open for only eight months of the year.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I realise that the hon. Gentleman wants to make his point, but I remind him that he needs to be very careful about what he says in order not to venture into current court proceedings. I am sure that he was going to do that, but I thought that I would remind him just in case it had slipped his mind.

[Gordon Henderson]

Thank you for your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker. I appreciate that the matter is sub judice, and I will be extremely careful. If you listen to my words, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will understand why I am using some of them.

Naturally, the resident has refused to leave the site, and has commenced legal action against the site owner—who, it is alleged, has responded with a campaign of harassment and intimidation. If that is true, such action is simply—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am very sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again, but I am afraid that he cannot make that allegation in the context of a current court case. I am really trying to guide him, and I am being advised on this. I ask him to be very careful.

[Gordon Henderson]

You will be delighted to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I was about to end that section of my speech, but I thank you again for your advice. You will have noted that I have mentioned no names at all. However, I will take your advice and move on to another aspect of park home sites that I think should be included in any future legislation, namely periods of occupation.

On Sheppey we have nearly 7,000 park homes, 4,000 of which are mobile homes and 3,000 of which are chalets or bungalows. Those homes provide sufficient accommodation for 28,000 holidaymakers, but it has been calculated that, given the change in holiday patterns, accommodation for a number closer to 10,000 is probably required. Some of those sites have permission for 10-month occupancy, while others have permission for only eight months. Many park homes are freehold properties, and some of them are of the very highest standard and built to full building regulations. They are no longer holiday homes, but are occupied by their owners for 10 months of the year, yet their owners are made homeless for two months of the year by the current planning laws.

One such site is Parklands village in Minster, where the residents of 76 dwellings have this week received a letter from the local authority reminding them that staying in their home between 3 January and the end of February will be a criminal offence. Somewhat bizarrely, these potential criminals were advised to contact the housing services department if they have any difficulty in finding alternative or temporary accommodation.

To add to this ludicrous situation, the reason given by planning officers for refusing a planning application for all-year-round occupation of Parkland village is that it is at risk from flooding. Setting aside the fact that a full risk assessment of the site has shown that the risk from flooding is minimal, and also setting aside the convoluted logic that refuses to allow occupation of the homes during January and February when the risk of flooding is at its lowest but allows occupation in March and April when the spring tides are at their highest, it is madness to force people out of perfectly good dwellings because of a supposed risk of flooding when those dwellings are located slap-bang next to a single-storey hotel that has permission for all-year-round occupancy. These residents are being forced, under threat of prosecution, to leave perfectly good-quality bungalows that have full building regulations and energy standards approved by the local authority’s building control section, and are being encouraged to move into hotel accommodation, such as that offered by the hotel situated on the same site as the bungalows they own. Such a policy is beyond parody, but I do not blame my local authority; I blame a planning system that has allowed such illogical action. It is time that that system is changed.

Like the constituencies of many other Members, the area I represent has a lengthy housing waiting list, yet we have over 3,000 surplus park homes on Sheppey. In 2006, Baroness Andrews was an Under-Secretary of State in the late unlamented Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and she made a speech in which she said:

“We all know that this country has a real challenge to meet the need for homes from a rapidly growing household population, as people live longer and more people choose to live alone. Park homes have a real part to play in expanding the choice and diversity in the housing stock and in providing affordable energy efficient homes.”

Let me categorically state that park homes are a part of the solution; they can help us meet the need for homes. They provide choice, quality and market-price affordability, and they can add environmentally friendly homes to the housing market. They provide a setting for stable, mixed, sustainable communities of all ages and household types.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

I am listening with interest to my hon. Friend’s comments. He says some of these homes are up to standard, but what would he say about those that are not up to standard and where people are prevented from staying for more than 10 months a year?

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Henderson]

I might address that point in my final comments.

I agree wholeheartedly with Baroness Andrews, and I am only sorry that the Government in which she served did not follow up her fine words with action. I hope that the current coalition Government do a lot better in tackling the housing shortage. One way in which they can start to do that is by taking note of the motion and introducing legislation to prevent park site owners from interfering in the sale of park homes without good reason, and using the opportunity actively to encourage local authorities to look much more sympathetically at planning applications that seek to convert holiday park home sites into permanent residential dwellings, conditional on those dwellings meeting full building regulations standards. That would be a way of providing extra homes to the people who need them in my constituency.