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Two questions decide what happens on your park

Whether the law protects you here, and what your pitch fee can lawfully do each year — set out with the provision behind each answer and what tribunals have decided when someone argued it.

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The two-document test

Whether the Act reaches your agreement

The Mobile Homes Act 1983 does not protect every park home agreement. It only reaches an agreement on a protected site, and two documents tell you whether the park you're looking at is one.

  1. Ask for the planning permission

    The planning permission for the land states what the site may be used for. If it restricts use to holidays, or ties occupation to a closed season, the site falls outside the protection the Act gives.

    The park operator holds this document and should be able to show it to you before you sign anything.

  2. Ask for the site licence

    The site licence carries the same kind of condition. A licence limited to holiday occupation, or one that imposes a closed season, has the same effect on protection as a restrictive planning permission.

    Check the licence and the planning permission separately. One can be clear while the other carries the restriction.

  3. See what the wording does

    Caravan Sites Act 1968 section 1(2) is what does the excluding: land whose planning permission or site licence is for holiday use only, or carries a closed season, is taken out of the protected category.

    Neither document restricts use

    The site is a protected site, and the Mobile Homes Act 1983 governs the agreement, including the written statement and the annual pitch fee review.

    Either document restricts use to holidays or a closed season

    The site is excluded under section 1(2), and the Act's protections do not apply to the agreement, whatever the agreement itself is called.

Read the exact wording on both documents yourself. A park described informally as residential can still carry a holiday-use planning permission or a closed-season licence condition underneath.

What one tribunal decided on a subsiding base

A pitch fee review notice proposing an increase does not settle the question on its own. In CHI/46UC/PHI/2023/0563, concerning Bungalow Park in Wiltshire, the First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber determined that the pitch fee stayed at £164.51 a month, with no increase allowed. The decision is dated 16 September 2024.

Why the increase was refused

The tribunal found that a subsiding base, which the site owner was responsible for maintaining, outweighed the presumption built into the review. That presumption can be reduced or displaced by the paragraph 18(1) factors (England), under Schedule 1 Chapter 2 of the Mobile Homes Act 1983, where the condition of the site counts against the owner proposing the figure. In this case it did, and the fee stayed where it was.

What index the figure was argued under

This determination reasoned on the RPI presumption. The Mobile Homes (Pitch Fees) Act 2023 substituted CPI for RPI on reviews from 2 July 2023 onward in England and Wales, so a reader holding a current notice should check which index applies to their own review date rather than reading this figure across to it.

One determination shows how the paragraph 18(1) factors were applied on one set of facts. It is not a rule that a subsiding base defeats an increase in every case, and a tribunal weighing different facts could reach a different figure. The determination in full is set out at Bungalow Park: The Tribunal That Refused the Increase, and what a case reference and reasoning mean when you read one yourself is covered at How to Read a Tribunal Decision.

A resident disputing a proposed figure keeps paying the current pitch fee until it is agreed or a tribunal decides. What that process involves is set out at If You Disagree, What Actually Happens.

At the desk or with the notice in hand

Three things to check before you sign or pay anything

Each one is a figure or a right with a provision behind it.

What the pitch fee can rise by

In England, paragraph 20(A1) presumes a change of no more than the 12-month CPI movement, up or down, unless that would be unreasonable.

Check your jurisdiction

Who pays the commission, and when

The buyer pays the site owner up to 10 per cent of the purchase price, within seven days of receiving the owner's bank details.

Read the call for evidence

The 28 days you might sign away

Section 1(3) gives you the written statement at least 28 days before you agree. Section 1(4) lets you sign that right away.

See what happens if you disagree

When to ask the Leasehold Advisory Service instead

A provision number and a tribunal reference tell you what the law says and what has been decided on a particular set of facts. They do not tell you what to write back to a site owner, or whether the notice in your hand is wrong in a way nobody has tested before a tribunal yet. That question needs someone who can read your own paperwork, and nothing here is a substitute for that.

Where that question goes

The Leasehold Advisory Service advises on park home law for free, independently of any operator, seller or adviser, and it is funded by government. It is reached at parkhomes.lease-advice.org, and its advisers can look at your own notice or agreement in a way a published provision cannot.

  • You have a pitch fee review notice and want it checked before you reply to it.
  • You are deciding whether to bring a dispute to the First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber.
  • You need a document from your own park read and explained.

If your question is instead what happens once a disagreement has been raised, that is set out on If You Disagree, What Actually Happens. Either way, you can ask us directly through Contact if you are not sure which question you are holding.