Margot James
Main Page: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I will not detain the House long. As many other hon. Members did, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on tabling the motion. I will happily support it on behalf of my constituents who live at a number of sites in Cheltenham—Sunnyfield lane in Up Hatherley, The Reddings and Harthurstfield park in west Cheltenham. Having named those locations, I emphasise what other hon. Members have said: it is a minority of site owners who are involved in many of these abuses. However, as other hon. Members have also pointed out, the power relationship that exists under the current system between site owner and home owner is so uneven that it almost invites some of these abuses.
Park home living can be a wonderful lifestyle, as it is for many thousands of people. Generally, it involves smaller homes with low maintenance costs that are on the lowest council tax band, on one level and on small plots in parks that engender a strong sense of community. Knocking on doors in the places I have mentioned is certainly a cheerful experience—not least because of some of the wonderfully quirky ornamentation and individual decoration that is often on show
A leading insurer tells me that the incidence of crime on parks is very low. Such homes have low insurance costs and represent a very safe lifestyle. Affordability and safety are key because, as has been pointed out, many residents are elderly and very few are well off. It is unfortunate that the industry is plagued by a small number of unscrupulous operators who, frankly, make their residents’ lives a misery. I shall not repeat the issues of fees, charges and services that many hon. Member have mentioned. Instead, I will highlight again the issue of buying and selling, particularly the approval-of-the-buyer stage, where the park owner meets privately with the prospective buyer. That represents such an obvious conflict of interest that I cannot imagine even the most angelic of site owners not being tempted at times to talk down the value of a park home in order perhaps to make a killing at some stage in the future. It is clear that in many cases the owner, out of desperation, ends up selling back to the site owner, often for a derisory sum, and the site owner then has a vacant plot to develop at a huge profit. At that point they have, in effect, stolen the homeowner’s equity, which sometimes represents the homeowner’s life savings, so it is a very serious issue.
I very much welcome the Government’s intention to transfer jurisdiction to residential property tribunals—a positive step that should address many of the broader issues of fees, charges and so on that crop up from time to time. However, I am not absolutely sure that it will solve the central problem of sales, because often by the time a residential property tribunal process has been completed—evidence has been presented, the tribunal has ruled, and a decision has been communicated—the buyer will be long gone. As one expert professional constituent of mine said:
“I cannot think of a more appropriate sector for there to be some sort of fit and proper person test, some of these owners are merciless.”
A fit and proper person test would be a strong supplement to the residential property tribunal policy that the Government are proposing. That is one of the reasons I strongly support the motion.
I should like briefly to mention the parallel issue of owners of mobile holiday homes. The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) has already referred to this, but I have a slightly different concern that has been raised by several constituents of mine who are permanent residents of Cheltenham but own static caravans or mobile homes in Swanage bay in Dorset, which I suspect is near to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole. Once again, these owners are not wealthy and are at the mercy of site owners who stand accused of reducing the market price of mobile homes artificially and then buying them themselves with the potential for a tidy profit. Again, we have the issue of fees, with the site owner apparently seeking an increase of nearly 50% in one year, in contravention of existing licences and Office of Fair Trading guidelines.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
I, too, have a constituent who has a pitch in the Swanage Bay View holiday park, which may or may not be the same as the park that the hon. Gentleman is talking about, where pitch fees have been increased by 22.5% over the past 12 months. There is a huge amount of pressure on older residents to sell up, with a lot of very commercial tactics being used to abuse their position.
Martin Horwood
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. We are certainly talking about the identical issue, if not the identical park, and once again we are talking about people’s life savings being at risk, often vulnerable elderly people. This is an almost entirely unregulated sector, and unless it is included in Ministers’ plans for residential property tribunals, it will remain so. Does the Minister have plans to include mobile holiday homes in any of the moves that he is making to establish residential property tribunals? If he cannot answer me now, perhaps he will write to me with his intentions or the Government’s view on that issue.
I am proud to support this motion. Since a minority of site owners apparently cannot be trusted to be fair to often vulnerable and elderly homeowners, it is vitally important for Parliament to step in.