I rise to speak in favour of new clause 42. It is a contradictory situation, but in very high-value areas such as St Albans people often want to live in mobile home parks because that is the most affordable route to securing their own home. There are many mobile home sites in my constituency, as well as some of the highest house prices and lowest affordability in the country.
I was pleased when the coalition Government sought to tackle some of the abuses of rogue site owners, but the issue of people being able to sell their own mobile home freely without being shackled with enormous costs really needs tackling. New clause 42 probes that issue and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views.
Residents at Newlands Park, a mobile home park in my constituency, have told me that when a home becomes available it is often so difficult to sell that the site owner ends up buying it. Gradually, more and more park homes are becoming the property of the site owner, who then rents them out for very high rents. On many sites in the United Kingdom not only is the cost of selling mobile homes hugely disproportionate to the value of the units, but restrictions are placed on those selling them. For example, in Newlands Park there is an insistence that the site owner should vet the potential new buyer of the mobile home. There are also restrictions on how and when advertisements for selling the mobile home can be displayed, and on the associated wording. As a result, mobile home or park home sites that are poorly run, or run by landlords imposing onerous demands, can start to become controlled by the site owner. This Bill—or, if not this one, perhaps another relating to the Mobile Homes Act 2013—could provide a tool to try to restrict the control that unscrupulous owners may choose to try to exercise over those who wish to divest themselves of a park home site.
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Park home sites are often owned by elderly, divorced or single people, or people on very low incomes, who are not always very savvy or able to defend themselves legally should they find themselves put in a difficult position. Putting new clause 42 into law would show the willingness of the Government to support these owners. It might also be a shot across the bows of the unscrupulous site owners who seek to make life so difficult and expensive for park home owners who are selling homes, often as a result of an elderly person having died. In the end, they give up and sell it to the site owner, and he or
she—he, in this case—builds up a lucrative property empire, in effect removing the ability of other people on low incomes to buy them in an affordable manner.
The drift of the new clause is very welcome. I hope that the Minister can indicate whether greater protections are going to be given to people who live on park home sites. If it is not going to happen now, I would like to know that it is coming down the road at some point in future, because park home owners have been one of the most disadvantaged, grey areas within housing, and it is time that they had a much stronger champion. This Government, in coalition, acted last time, and I hope that this time they will take it a step further and strengthen the protections for park home owners.