Hansard

Oliver Mundell got to the nub of the issue when he said that the owners of such homes feel that they, rather then the owners of the sites, are vulnerable. That is the crux of the problem.

In my constituency, there is Annsmuir park, which is near Ladybank. The owners of the site have been appalling. The site’s maintenance and issues around drainage and electricity have frequently been reported to me and my colleague Wendy Chamberlain. The site is split—it is partly a holiday park and partly a residential park—but the poor relationship between the owners of the mobile homes and the owners of the site is long standing. It is important to call the owners out when they have poor practice, because it is important that they improve their practice in the future.

As we have heard today, a common problem of such poor practice concerns misselling. Is it a holiday home or a residence? Are people staying there all year round? Do people understand that difference before they purchase their home? There are issues around poor maintenance and the distribution of statements—people frequently do not receive their statements. As Mark Ruskell has just alighted on, when there are power cuts, they are considered as commercial customers rather than individual residents, and their vulnerability is not highlighted in the power company’s system.

I pay credit to Murdo Fraser for securing this debate. I was impressed with the authoritative way in which he provided great detail and knowledge on the issue, and with his clear dedication to try to resolve it.

At Ladybank, we took the issue up with the local authority, but it was very passive about it. It was underresourced, which is a frequent state for many local authorities, but it was also passive in terms of how it applied the licensing process and the original planning process. I understand that it has many challenges across the piece, but there are clearly incomplete powers and underresourced licensing teams.

Murdo Fraser’s point about tribunals is valid. We need to look at a tribunal process and make sure that there is a vehicle for residents to be able to raise their concerns at an affordable price through an official channel, rather than having to use the ramshackle processes that exist at present. That may drive changes in the wider sector and improve the process. Even if the tribunal is not used very often, it will bring some discipline and order into the application of the process. I understand that there is provision for the tribunal process to be utilised in England, and I believe that it should be applied here as well.

This is an incredibly important issue. A lot of people are feeling very vulnerable just now. I hear about many cases of people living in what are actually holiday homes—they do not receive bin collections, they are not on the voting register and they do not pay council tax. Those people are all living on the edge of society. They think that they live in their homes, but they do not officially live in residential homes. That is where the nub of the problem is.

I welcome the fact that the Government is doing a review of the sector. It needs radical change, because my experience so far is that current processes are wholly inadequate.