Nick Gibb
Main Page: Nick Gibb (Conservative - Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)
Mr Pickles
The sums relate to those affected in the north of England and the rest of the country just before Christmas of last year. I concede that we have made a fundamental change to the system. It probably was long overdue. We will be consulting about the long-term. For the sake of clarity, I should say we have not changed the threshold; all we have done is disregarded the amount paid for the education authority and for fire, which means the threshold effectively drops.
Mr Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)
T10. May I again thank the Secretary of State for coming to Pagham last week?On another matter, many park home residents, including many in my constituency, are frequently charged unreasonable management fees by unscrupulous site owners. This Government tightened the legislation to give extra protection to residents so far as pitch fees are concerned, but there is less protection in respect of management fees, which some site owners are now using instead of the pitch fee to extract unreasonable sums of money from their residents. Will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State look into this issue to see what further protections can be introduced to protect park home residents from predatory site owners?
Kris Hopkins
The Government have introduced a whole range of guidance and rules associated with protecting residents on park home sites, including stopping owners of sites undermining sales on sites, and making sure fees on a site can be introduced only after the exchange of a statutory form; the individual tenant can then seek an arbitrary intervention if they need to. Other steps, such as to do with the rules associated with a particular site, can be taken only after consultation with the tenant. One of our interventions serves as an example: up until now a tenant could not purchase gas bottles from anywhere but on-site; they can now purchase them wherever they want to.