6 Conclusions
83. Malpractice is widespread across the park home
sector and ranges from site owners poorly maintaining sites and
charging their residents unfairly to much more serious cases of
harassment and intimidation against residents. Sale blocking is
a serious problem that needs addressing urgently and we have concluded
that this could only be properly addressed by removing the site
owner's right to approve buyers of park homes, which will require
primary legislation. In the meantime, the Government must use
secondary legislation to increase the powers available to the
Residential Property Tribunal to deter site owners from blocking
sales. Though we received some representations calling for the
site owner's commission on sales to be reduced we concluded that
for the industry to remain viable this must be retained.
84. The park home licensing regime is over 50 years
old and is ineffective. It does not provide local authorities
with a means of resourcing their licensing operations or monitoring
park homes sites in the 21st century. Nor does it provide
authorities with adequate powers to take action when licences
are breached or provide an effective deterrent to site owners
not to breach licence conditions. The recommendations we have
made would involve a thorough reworking of the existing system.
They would also ensure that the greater part of the cost to operate
the new system falls on the worst site owners rather than home
owners and good site owners. We see a strong case for a 'fit and
proper person' requirement and we recommend that the Government
takes powers to introduce one if the other reforms that are made
prove ineffective.
85. The legal framework that covers agreements between
park home site owners and residents is flawed. It neither effectively
sets out the obligations of site owners nor does it provide residents
with clear legal redress when site owners ignore their obligations.
We have recommended that the Government pursue its intention to
legislate to clarify the obligations of site owners towards their
residents, but rather than wait to legislate through primary legislation,
it should as far as possible do this through secondary legislation
this session. In addition, the Government must ensure that residents,
site owners and others involved in the park home sector are made
more aware of the rights and obligations of residents.
86. Park home sites are particularly suited to people
that are older and more vulnerable than the population as a whole,
yet the current legislative framework is weak and offers unscrupulous
operators an easy route to exploit them. Legislation
is urgently needed and while some useful improvements can be achieved
through secondary legislation this session—and we set these
out in our report—primary legislation is urgently required
to overhaul the park home sector, especially to stop sales blocking
and to put licensing on a firm footing. We therefore recommend
that a comprehensive package consisting of the measures we have
set out is brought forward by the Government. We further recommend
that a bill reforming the park home sector be given a slot as
soon as possible in the Government's legislative timetable and
that priority is given to assist the department in drafting this
legislation.
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