Park home owners marched on 10 Downing Street on September 18 to protest against the 10% resale commissions levied on their properties at resale by site owners.
Chanting “We pay 10%. What do we want? Zero!” a delegation headed by Sonia McColl OBE, the veteran park home leader, accompanied by Sir Peter Bottomley, delivered a petition to the prime minister.
The event was reported by both BBC and ITV, to whom Sir Peter Bottomley said:
“END THIS INJUSTICE. END IT NOW. INSTEAD OF 10%, MAKE IT NOUGHT, NILL, ZERO, STOP IT.”
Afterwards the demonstrators – one travelling down from Scotland – went to Westminster, where they held a meeting in one of the palace’s committee rooms attended by half a dozen backbench MPs, many of them Tories who have park home sites in their rural constituencies.
They included former housing minister Heather Wheeler, who referred to “good site owners” as well as bad. Surely the point, as in leasehold, is not whether they are good or bad but that they have unbalanced powers over other people, which they shouldn’t have?
Speakers were Sir Christopher Chope OBE MP, William Tandoh of the Department of Levelling UP, Sebastian O’Kelly of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and, of course, PHOJC President Sir Peter Bottomley MP.
Full report of the event on 18 September is here:
PHOJC 2023 10% WESTMINSTER RALLY – with NOTHING ADDED TO THE PITCH FEE. – Park Home Owners JUSTICE Campaign
PHOJC 2023 10% WESTMINSTER RALLY – with NOTHING ADDED TO THE PITCH FEE. – Park Home Owners JUSTICE Campaign
Park homes and leasehold face remarkably similar challenges, but whereas the latter involves mainly legal bullying in the courts with park home owners it can involve physical menace – even to the extreme of the theft of Sonia McColl’s park home. LKP is very proud of having got this disgrace into national media and parliamentary attention:
Park homes are a retirement housing solution for many, and there are 250,000 residents.
At an average of 69 years old they tend to be younger than retirement housing customers, whose average age is given as 79.
In addition, the park homes do actually appear to increase in value, rather than radically depreciate which is so often the experience with retirement housing.
Related posts:
Park home demonstrators demand end to 10% sales fees – as litany of crooked practice reported to MPs
Park home champion Sonia McColl OBE has her own home stolen!
Park home pensioners demand MPs dump the British Holiday and Home Parks Association from its All Party Parliamentary Group
LKP helps raise £14,682 for park home champion Sonia McColl OBE
