Sale of Park Homes

Debate between Natascha Engel and Steve Barclay

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

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

I add my thanks to those of other hon. Members to the many campaigners who have gone before us in the previous three decades—at least—who have sought justice for people who live on park home sites. I thank Lord Graham of Edmonton, who has done so much work on park homes over many years. The right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) has led the charge for many years and I thank her for her work. We have got to know her heroic constituent Sonia McColl extremely well. She has become the park home owners’ agony aunt, answering e-mails and phone calls into the night, dealing with some very distressed individuals. She also set up the Park Home Owners Justice Campaign. She has done magnificent work.

I thank my predecessor, Harry Barnes, who led the campaign in the 18 years he was in the House before me. Many of the people who live in North East Derbyshire’s park home sites would like to thank him. Most of all, I thank all the tireless campaigners in the eight park home sites in North East Derbyshire. Hundreds of people live in the park home sites in Riverdale, Millfield, Brookfield, Ponderosa, Sunningdale, Poplar Drive, Grasscroft and Bramley.

The 2011 census showed that something like 160,000 people lived in 84,000 park homes in about 2,000 UK sites. Those figures might be out of date, but more people and not fewer live in park homes. Most park home sites have a rule that people must be 50 or over to live there. Therefore, by their nature, they are places where people go when they have sold up in order to live off the money they have released from their homes. They are on low incomes, and they tend to be elderly and vulnerable. They live in isolated areas, because the sites are on the edges of communities. As the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole said, many of them are very frightened.

[Stephen Barclay]

I concur with that. Is not a further problem that those people cannot possibly have an idea what the charge will be, because, by its very nature, it will be decided in future? They will not know what the sale price is, and therefore even an informed consumer cannot consent to it.

[Natascha Engel]

That is a key element, and the Park Home Owners Justice Campaign group has made exactly that point. How can the charge be such a fundamental part of the necessary profits of site owners—it is necessary according to the site owners—if they cannot say when the profits will come? I will go into more detail on that.

Hon. Members are enormously grateful to the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for promoting as a private Member’s Bill what became the Mobile Homes Act 2013. It has and will make a huge difference. The Act is bedding down. He is very lucky to have so many good apples as site owners in his constituency. All the bad ones have come to mine. As a result of the Act and other legislation, the intimidation has stepped up a level. As campaigning MPs, we need to ensure the involvement of the local authorities.

I do not recognise the picture the hon. Gentleman paints. I understand the importance of consensus, and as hon. Members have said, we do not want to deny park home site owners a good living. They have a very good living at the moment. All we are fighting for is justice. The 10% commission is a fundamental injustice in the sector and I will go into detail to explain why.

The 10% commission is a flat fee. It was initially intended as a maximum commission, but it is a flat fee of 10% no matter the value of the home, how long somebody has lived there, and what improvements people have made to their homes. The homes in my constituency are absolutely beautiful. There is a reason why the report mentioned by the hon. Member for Waveney is called “Living the Dream”. It is absolutely idyllic living on a park home site with like-minded people. It is quiet and beautiful and on the edge of beautiful countryside. It should be absolute heaven in retirement, but improvements are paid for and done at great cost to the people who live there, not to the site owners themselves.

The biggest reason the site owners give, as the hon. Member for Waveney said, is profit margin. With the profit margin, 70% comes from pitch fees and 30%, as the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole mentioned, is from income that is not secured—residents do not know when it is coming. They are told that it is an essential revenue stream for the maintenance of park home sites. I can hear almost every single one of the 600 residents in North East Derbyshire sighing and saying, “If only”. On the sites we go around, there are loose cables and tree roots growing into water pipes that are not being repaired. Massive costs are incurred where there are leakages. As we all know, utility bills are collected on the whole of the site—there is one bundled-up price. Therefore, if the site owner does nothing about the burst pipes, it is the residents who pay.