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Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [Lords]

New clause 11 refers to park homes, the legislation behind which can be found in the Mobile Homes Act 1983, as amended. The Government were genuine in the amendments they made to park homes legislation in the Housing Act 2004. I am the first to admit that the new clause is very broad in its attempt to resolve a serious problem and I hope the Minister can help me in finding the best way forward. I have 11 park home sites in my constituency, the largest of which has over 150 units. Bizarrely, these are not dwellings under the law, but chattels. They have many of the rights of properties, but they cannot be considered as such under the law. Most park home sites are well managed and I am a great supporter of this type of living, which affords the occupants an excellent life choice; an affordable home and a way of maintaining savings while living in a social environment. All is not well in park homes across the country, however. This week I attended a meeting of the all-party group on mobile homes, chaired by the excellent hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Olner). We heard from the National Association of Park Home Residents that despite all the recent legislation and genuine attempts from both sides of the House to address the problems, dwellers in mobile homes are worse off than ever. Under the provisions of the Housing Act 2004, unscrupulous site owners have been free to charge huge additional sums for the extra administration caused by legislation. Under the new legislation, park home owners may require the site owner to give notice of 14 days before entering their buildings. Site owners are now asking residents to put electricity meters outside their homes and to pay for that. All these costs resulting from legislation, along with changes to the RPI and other matters, are piling pressure on to some of the most financially challenged people in our communities. The majority of park home sites are well managed. Residents get on well with the site owner and they can enjoy their lives. But in too many sites, unscrupulous owners behave in a way that sometimes defies belief. I have used terms like ““Dickensian”” and ““robber baron”” perhaps too freely, to the point where I am exaggerating a little, but there is great misery and concern. The clause concerns the resolving of disputes. One problem area is the sale of properties. Let us say that an elderly park home owner has to move into residential care and puts her home on the market. Under the terms of legislation and her agreement, she can sell to anyone, but the site owner has to agree that that person can take over. He cannot take an unreasonable attitude to the new purchaser and has 28 days to approve. However, he can comply with the legislation precisely by saying, ““I am delighted that you have bought this park home and that you will be living on my site. I think you should know that I’m going to make your life hell. I am going to try to increase pitch fees to the maximum, put more units on the site and not resurface the roads.”” Pretty soon, the purchaser realises that this is not where they want to spend the more leisurely years of their life and pulls out of the deal. After that has happened two or three times, the vendor is so desperate that she agrees to sell at a knock-down price to the park site owner. To add insult to injury, he then takes 10 per cent. of the sale fee. I am seeking to allow park home owners to raise such horrendous matters in a more appropriate form of tribunal than currently exists. It takes great courage for individuals to follow due process, be it through the courts or a tribunal, to achieve redress. There is the added problem that local authorities, who have huge responsibilities for park homes sites, are not exercising their full powers. I am not blaming my local authority; it is reasonably assiduous. But there are many stories of local authorities not exercising their powers within licensing agreements to improve the quality of life for park home dwellers. I want to raise the issue of park home owners who wish to have a residents’ association. On well-run sites, enlightened site owners welcome residents’ associations. It can be a mutually beneficial experience, as the site owner can have a direct link, through one group of people, to all the park home owners. Conversely, people feel that they have a conduit for their concerns on a regulated basis through an organisation with a constitution. The unscrupulous site owner finds such associations a threat, however. In one site in my constituency, the owner has written to residents to set out his reasons why he does not want a residents’ association on the site. He said in his letter that those who are pushing for an association have a ““hidden agenda”” and that such schemes often cause ill-feeling between residents and park owners. He is really saying that he does not want the residents of that park home to be empowered, as they are entitled to be under the law, to represent their concerns in a properly constituted body. The standard trick by the unscrupulous site owner is to divide and rule. I have witnessed many cases where the owner has asked people to withdraw their names from petitions calling for a residents’ association, with the proposed association then falling. There have been even worse cases where owners have passed out private information about the circumstances of individuals who are trying to set up residents’ associations. What options exist for an aggrieved park home dweller to resolve a dispute? Really, the only option is the county court, which is a laborious and expensive process. By and large, the people concerned have reached the stage of their lives where they do not want or need the hassle of going to a county court to resolve a dispute. There must be a better way of doing it. I have discovered that local authorities can, if they wish, set up tribunals to carry out their functions in settling disputes or dealing with local authority matters. Basically, local authorities can do what they like when exercising their own powers, but they may not set up a tribunal to deal with something that is out of their jurisdiction. They can, for example, deal with licensing measures, but they cannot act when residents are trying to set up a residents association but are unable to do so. That is the problem that I seek to resolve through the new clause. In some circumstances, it is in people’s interests to go to the county court, because if they get a bad judgment they can at least appeal. That route remains attractive in dealing with several kinds of disputes, but for a great many people the county court remains a daunting prospect, to the point where they are not prepared to go down that path. I hope that the way in which the Mobile Homes Act 1983 was amended by statutory instrument last year may offer a way forward. If the Minister is willing to meet me, and perhaps members of interested bodies on both sides, to discuss that option, I will be prepared to consider withdrawing the new clause to find a better method of resolving the situation. In any event, I hope that she will take from this debate the serious concerns that exist among thousands of people, many of whom have reached a point in their lives where they simply do not want the overbearing responsibility, difficulty, expense and process of going to a county court when there must be a better and more local tribunal system that can deal with their concerns.