Park

homes

I RECENTLY spoke in a Commons debate on park homes.

There are 85,000 in England based on 2,000 park home sites. The vast majority of these sites provide pleasant affordable places to live but there are those where life is not happy.

In essence, a very small number of site owners make the lives of those who live on their sites a misery. The problems range from poor site management and maintenance, to health and safety breaches, to residents being intimidated out of their homes or having the sale of their property thwarted.

Many park home residents are elderly and some vulnerable. Few are wealthy and to date it has been difficult for residents to take effective action against rogue site owners. This should change next spring when the jurisdiction over disputes will be transferred from county courts to a residential property tribunal which will be accessible to residents at low cost.

One point I stressed in the debate is for the Government to ensure that these tribunals process cases promptly as experience shows that some unscrupulous site owners are adept at using delaying tactics when dealing with dispute resolution.

In the debate I also pressed the Government to introduce a fit and proper person qualification for site owners and I also argued that local authorities should have a duty (rather than just a right) to apply conditions to site owner licences and to enforce those conditions where they are breached.

In the main, park homes provide a wonderful and affordable way to live but where they create misery and hardship for some of the more vulnerable in our society then the law must be there to protect them. We all deserve the quiet enjoyment of our homes and to be treated with fairness, dignity and respect.