What park home owners say to LEASE

Through our direct advice services (written and telephone), we receive circa 1,000 enquiries from park home owners each year. Unfortunately, we continue to hear of cases where clients are facing issues of sale blocking and related harassment. In the past year we received 53 enquiries relating to harassment and further 64 relating to sale blocking (see table below). This represents over 7% of all park home enquiries received.

We cannot verify that each of these cases would meet a legal definition of sale blocking, however, this is the number of cases where a park home owner has felt compelled to call for expert legal advice on their situation and has either raised sale blocking as a concern directly or their account has prompted one of LEASE’s advisors to provide advice on it. This is significant.

This is not the most common enquiry we receive; however, there is a persistent number of cases each year, and the impact on the clients is significant. They may fear for the security of their home and personal safety.

When these issues occur, we hear reports of site owners offering prices vastly below market to buy the property, which could have an enormous impact on people’s lives.

One client spoke of having a buyer prepared to purchase the property for £75,000 whilst the owner was trying to purchase it for £10,000. Another stated they had initially put their property up for £200,000 but were concerned they would need to resort to “asking the site owner for clearance value, from what I’ve seen online, that may be anything from £1 upwards”. All this also raises the risk that these cases are underreported through fear of retribution from park owners or embarrassment around the financial losses. This is a concern that’s been raised previously by organisations such as Park Homes Legislation Action Group Scotland (PHLAGS) [12], and residents themselves in the 2018 call for evidence [13].

Through an analysis of our caseload and conversations with park home owners, we have identified that most cases fall into two broad categories.

A common tactic is to misinform potential buyers. For example, we have heard numerous complaints that site owners are claiming there are serious issues with the quality and condition of homes that park homeowners do not recognise.

An alternative approach is to simply harass or intimidate sellers and potential buyers in order to achieve their desired outcome. Below, is the testimony of a client who had been told by the site owner that he intended to illegally remove their property from his site before they could arrange a sale.

Similarly, we have heard from park home owners that site owners have also intimidated or put off local estate agents to the point that they are not willing to even engage in sales on the site because they know purchases will be obstructed.

When cases are raised with LEASE we inform clients of their legal rights and their options for redress, but issues are often not easily resolved. As stated above, clients are often older, more vulnerable and can feel afraid to tackle the issues directly. The options for challenging sale blocking are as follows:

1. raise a complaint to the site owner and seek informal mediation resolution
2. raise the matter with your local authority, which has the power to prosecute site owners engaging in this behaviour
3. if your local authority doesn’t take action, you can instigate their internal complaints procedure and escalate the matter to the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman if not resolved satisfactorily; however, we hear from customers, charities and campaign groups that often this process is insufficient for consumers to get appropriate redress

To illustrate some of these issues, here is the case of one of LEASE’s clients Mary.

Mary’s story highlights some key issues. Whilst there is legislation in place with mechanisms designed to resolve issues of harassment and sale blocking, it only provides local authorities with a power, not a duty, to take enforcement action. Local authorities may choose not to take enforcement action. This may be because they would prefer to resolve cases through conversations with site owners, as in Mary’s case, or it may be that they do not think there is sufficient evidence to take a case forward. Clients spoke about the challenges of documenting evidence with site owners savvy enough not to put incriminating evidence in writing.

It can also be because local authorities are concerned about the resource implications involved. Assessing the merits of a case, reviewing evidence and taking enforcement action is a significant undertaking in the wider context of local authority resourcing and capacity. Local authorities raised these concerns in the 2018 MHCLG call for evidence, where, in five years following the introduction of the 2013 legislation, local authorities had not made wide use of their new powers. For example, there had only been eight prosecutions for breach of licensing conditions, with the vast majority of authorities not taking any action [14].

A further tool for local authorities to take action against site owners is through the ‘fit and proper person’ test. If a site licence holder fails a ‘fit and proper person’ test, they must apply for an alternative manager to be assessed and placed on a register of fit and proper persons to manage the site. Operating a site in contravention of the regulations is a criminal offence, for which a person would be liable on summary conviction to an unlimited fine. However, because a site owner who fails this test can submit further applications for another individual to manage the site, they can continue to control the site even if not as the official manager. There is no requirement for the site owner to be fit and proper.

A core issue that runs through all this is that the system for challenging sale blocking can place a significant burden on the victims of sale blocking. They need to challenge the behaviour of a site owner, to document evidence which may not be easy, to raise the issue with local authorities and to potentially challenge the inactivity of the local authority. Given the older demographic and vulnerability of park homeowners, this may be too onerous for them to be able to access redress.