LATEST LAW ON VIDEO: FROM CATS TO MOBILE HOMES

There's yet more law from me in my latest free video. Click below and find out about why cats are to be microchipped, the new law on treasure, the increased compensation limits available from the Financial Services Ombudsman and why mobile home occupiers should soon be better off.

MOBILE HOME OCCUPIERS IN ENGLAND:HELP IS ON ITS WAY!

 If, as is highly possible. your mobile home site owner is giving you grief, you may now be able to do something about exterminating them other than strangulation - and please, please, don't resort to that. 

New laws* will prohibit the use of land as a residential mobile home site unless the local authority is satisfied that the site manager is a fit and proper person. Authorities will have until 1 July 2021 to establish a fit and proper register and applications to go onto that register will have to be submitted during the following three months.  From 1 October 2021, it will be an offence for the site to be used without a registered manager. Should there be a second conviction for this offence then the licence to use the site as a mobile home site can be revoked. This should all act as a deterrent to the owner and their staff from any unreasonable conduct towards occupiers. Just mention it in the sweetest of tones when they next throw a brick through your window.

So where do you come in? Start now in giving the local authority details of your legitimate complaints. Then they can take those into account next year in deciding whether the hateful swine who has been making your life a misery for so long is a saint or a sinner.

* The Mobile Homes (Requirement for Manager of Site to be a Fit and Proper Person) (England) Regulations 2020 SI 2020/1034

It's Corks Out on Mobile Homes

There are around 85,000 mobile homes on about 2,000 sites which are governed by the Mobile Homes Act 1983. A vast number of occupiers have signed agreements in a standard form which is recommended by British Holidays & Parks Association whose logo is to be found on the document.

This standard form agreement says that that in addition to the pitch fee and general or water rates (or both) the occupier must pay to the site owner "charges in respect of electricity gas water telephone and others services." OK, but does that entitle the site owner to extract a general service charge from an occupier such as for reading gas and electricity meters, supplying gas and electricity to communal areas, having to call out electricians to resolve problems, maintain a computer program and generally dealing with administration? No, ruled the Court of Appeal* last Friday. Where this particular form of agreement applies, the site owner cannot pass on to the occupier any charge for these services but only charge up the occupier for what they have paid out to third parties for providing the utilities.

The Court of Appeal decision will not prevent site owners from seeking to collect payment for what has been ruled out, as part of the pitch fee and the standard agreement allows an annual review of the pitch fee. But an occupier will be able to challenge an increased pitch fee and take the challenge to tribunal where the real extra expense incurred by the owner will be under careful scrutiny. They would have to show that the charges in question were unreasonable.

As for occupiers who have settled demands for payments which, according to the Court of Appeal's ruling, were not due, the money overpaid could be claimed back with interest and going back for up to six years.

* The case was P R Hardman & Partners v Greenwood and another [2017] EWCA Civ 52