Park Homes

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Howarth. I begin by welcoming the Mobile Homes Act 2013, which goes a long way towards rebalancing the rights of park home owners and site owners. Overwhelming evidence of appalling practices made it an imperative to introduce legislation to prevent unscrupulous site owners from blocking residents’ sales on the open market. It was also obvious that greater protection should be made available through enhanced local authority powers and reform of the licensing system. I have spoken at some length on such issues over the years, but I will just touch on them today.

I again congratulate my constituent Sonia McColl, a park home owner who set up the national park home owners’ justice campaign and who has fought tirelessly on park home issues, particularly sale blocking. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on successfully leading his private Member’s Bill on mobile homes through to enactment. Different parts of the 2013 Act are being implemented at different times, so it is difficult to make an early, overall judgment on the Act’s impact. What assessment has been made of the effectiveness of the Department for Communities and Local Government’s communication strategy to inform park home owners of their new rights and site owners of their new responsibilities? On one site, a notice has been erected stating that all sales must be carried out through the site owner’s office. How is the new legislation on sale blocking being monitored and enforced?

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on all her work. Without her, much of this would not have happened. The Mobile Homes Act 2013 has already made an overnight difference, but a big issue that I have always campaigned about is the 10% charge payable to site owners. Will she say a little about that?

[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.