Colman Coyle’s Matt Champ and the property litigation team have been successful in securing acknowledgment from the owner of a mobile home site (“the Site”) that the client’s lodge is protected under the Mobile Homes Act 1983 (“the Act”) and not a holiday let that enjoyed no such protection.

Our client approached the Site about needing somewhere to live full time and she was made several promises by the Site’s employee as to how she could live in her lodge all year round as her permanent and only home. However, the agreement that she was presented with was for a ‘holiday licence’. The consequence of that agreement was that a mobile home on a site that only has a holiday licence cannot be protected by the Act and could not be used as a full-time residence. However, an agreement on a site, or part of a site, that had a ‘residential licence’ would have protection under the Act and could be a full-time residence. The protections under the Act ensure that the owner of such sites cannot simply do as they please and must respect various rights to such mobile homeowners.

The client’s agreement was amended by the employee at the time of purchase to show that it was the agreement was to last for 99 years, which was clearly inconsistent with a holiday licence. On the basis of the promises made, the client paid £140,000.00 for the lodge and moved in.

However, once money had changed hands, the owners of the Site did not honour the promises made and, due to the local council stating that our client was not permitted to live in her lodge, stated that our client had to vacate her lodge, she had nowhere else to go. This was despite the council in question acknowledging, as is common, that many people were living in various mobile homes sites contrary to those site’s licences.

Accordingly, proceedings were issued against the owners of the Site for proprietary estoppel, namely that the promises made to our client were enforceable and the owners of the Site should, indeed, honour them. This meant that we were mainly seeking a declaration that the client’s lodge was protected by the Act and the client should be permitted to live in the same full-time as her principal and only home.

During those proceedings, the owners of the site went into liquidation and the Site was sold to a new owner who refused to engage with the proceedings and said that any such issues should be taken up with the former owner’s liquidators.

We argued that, because our client had an ‘equity’ when the land was sold as a result of the proprietary estoppel, and she was in actual occupation when the sale took place, the promises made by the original owner were binding as against the new owner as an ‘overriding interest’. On that basis, we applied to substitute the old owners for the new owners within the existing proceedings.

The matter came before HHJ Monty KC (“HHJ”) at the County Court at Central London. As a result of our strategy outside of court, and the way in which the application had been prepared, it was agreed that the application would be adjourned so that the terms of a new agreement could be discussed, the matter being reserved to HHJ if discussions proved unsuccessful. However, the most important part was that the new owners were prepared to acknowledge and to record in an order of the court that our client’s agreement was protected by the Act, even if the terms of that agreement still had to be agreed.

As a result, action cannot now be taken in relation to the client’s occupation of her mobile home without strict compliance with the core terms of the Act which is exactly what the client was after.

Matt Champ says:

The mis-selling of mobile homes as alternative full-time accommodation on sites with holiday licences is an unsung national scandal. It is common knowledge that local authorities turn a blind eye to people living in such circumstances as a result of the sweet-talking of site owners because otherwise local authorities would be forced to house a substantial number of people who had nowhere to go.

I am pleased that, through a lot of hard work and sheer force of will, we were able to help the client get the protection that she wanted. She will now be able to hopefully sleep normally again and not worry that she is going to lose everything and be made homeless through no fault of her own other than trusting what a large business told her.

Colman Coyle have extensive experience of dealing with all types of property disputes. If you have any matters that you think you might need a hand with, please do get in touch.