Park Home Owners Club

As you are aware, our Justice Campaign has been calling for and working towards getting changes in legislation. Below is an inquiry that has just been put out by the Communities and Local Government Committee with submissions invited by the 1st February 2012.

Your Justice Campaign will reply to this inquiry in the fullest possible way - but that is not enough. It needs every Park Home Owner in our Country to respond to the areas listed below and to supply evidence (if you can ) in the format they have requested - or - Ask your Residents Association Committee or Action Group to do it on behalf of your park.

Please do not be put off if you do not have an email address. Write what you want to say on the topics listed below and take or send it to someone on your Park who does have a computer and ask them to send it for you.

As you are all aware, Park Home Owners do not get too many opportunities to present their feelings and evidence to an inquiry - but now you have and they have not given you much time in which to do it. The closing date for submissions is 5pm on the 1st February 2012.

Please do not ignore this opportunity or leave it to someone else. If you do not speak out now, you can bet that you will not be given another chance and that will be the end of it.

All Campaign Members have worked hard over the last two years to make Westminster aware of how Park Home Owners are suffering. If you want changes in legislation to stop the abuse from Park Owners, please take note of the guide lines the inquiry requires and respond (in your thousands) before 5pm on the 1st February 2012 to the email address that is given below and mark your submission as "Park Homes".


Best wishes
Sonia.

COMMONS

The Communities and Local Government Committee to carry out an inquiry into park homes

21 December 2011
New Inquiry and Call for evidence
Park Homes
The Communities and Local Government Committee has decided to carry out an inquiry into park homes. Earlier in the year the Government signalled its intention to carry out a consultation exercise on a package of measures, which have not yet emerged. The Committee sees its inquiry as identifying key concerns and, if necessary, examining the need for legislative changes.

• Communities and Local Government Committee

The Committee invites submissions from interested parties, particularly those who live in park homes, site owners and local authorities with park homes within their areas, on the adequacy of the operation of the law as it affects park homes, on, for example:

• site fees;
• the awarding and revocation of site licences
• the regulation and enforcement of site license conditions;
• the need for the manager of a site to be a "fit and proper" person and the enforcement of this requirement;
• the regulation of parks owned by local authorities; • the protection of occupiers of park homes against harassment and illegal eviction; and
• resale of park homes and resale fees. Memoranda addressing any or all of these issues, in accordance with the guidelines set out below, are invited by 5pm on Wednesday, 1 February 2012.

Each submission should:

1. be no more than 4,000 words in length;
2. begin with a short summary in bullet point form;
3. be in Word format with as little use of colour or logos as possible; and
4. be accompanied by a covering letter or email containing the name and contact details of the individual or organisation submitting evidence.

A copy of the submission should be sent by e-mail to clgev@parliament.uk and marked "Park Homes".

It is helpful, for Data Protection purposes, for contact details not to be included in the text of submissions, but sent separately in a covering letter. You should be aware that there may be circumstances in which the House of Commons will be required to communicate information to third parties on request, in order to comply with its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

A guide for written submissions to Select Committees may be found on the parliamentary website at: http://www.parliament.uk/commons/selcom/witguide.htm
Please also note that:

• Material already published elsewhere should not form the basis of a submission, but may be referred to within a proposed memorandum, in which case a hard copy of the published work may be included.
• Memoranda submitted should be kept confidential until formally accepted by the Committee. The Committee has authorised the publication by witnesses of their evidence, but such publication should await the formal acknowledgement of acceptance of the submission as evidence to the Committee.
• Once submitted, evidence is the property of the Committee. The Committee normally, though not always, chooses to make public the written evidence it receives, by publishing it on the internet (where it will be searchable), by printing it or making it available through the Parliamentary Record Office. If there is any information you believe to be sensitive you should highlight it and explain what harm you believe would result from its disclosure. The Committee will take this into account in deciding whether to publish or further disclose the evidence.