Park homes

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Posted on: 20 June 2012
By: mackene
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Filed under: News

Legislation ‘more suited to the 1960s’ is failing to protect park home residents  from exploitation by unscrupulous owners, according to the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee. About 160,000 people live in 84,000 park homes which accounts for around 0.38% of the total housing in England. There are around 1,950 park home sites across England, which are concentrated in rural and seaside locations. The vast majority of park home sites are privately owned with a small number owned by local authorities. Park homes have proved attractive to retired people wishing to release capital from the sale of a house and find a pleasant and peaceful location with a sense of community to live in permanently. As a consequence park residents tend to be older than the population as a whole: in 1992 about 55% of park homes were occupied by people aged 60 or over. A decade later this proportion had risen to over 68%. The Select Committee has published the findings of an inquiry which aimed to the key issues that residents face, to assess the scale of the problems and to examine what legislative solutions might be appropriate.

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