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Where determinations are published, and why

A First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber determination is written down and then placed where anyone can read it, because publication is the default position. A determination is only kept back where one of the parties has asked, in writing, for that specific case not to be published. That is the exception, and it is stated here so you know what to expect when a case reference does not turn anything up.

What the case reference tells you before you open it

A case reference is built from three parts: the region the tribunal sat in, the type of case it was, and the year it was decided. Read together, those three pieces tell you what kind of dispute you are looking at before you read a word of the reasoning, which matters because a determination from one region, in one year, on one set of facts, is not a rule for any other site.

The determinations carried on Bungalow Park: The Tribunal That Refused the Increase and Beechfield Park: When the Notice Was Void both carry references of this kind. Checking a reference against the case itself is the way to see what a tribunal actually decided.

Locating a determination

How to find a determination on GOV.UK

A case reference is only useful once you know where it leads. Here is the path from that reference to the actual determination.

  1. Start at the published decisions

    First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber determinations are published through the GOV.UK decisions search. You can search it with whatever you already have: the case reference, the site name, or the town the park is in.

    You already have a case reference

    Type it in as it appears on your notice or letter. A correctly entered reference should return the single determination it belongs to.

    You only have a name or address

    Search by the park name or the nearest town instead, then narrow the results to the Property Chamber if the list includes decisions from other tribunals.

  2. Read what the reference tells you

    Before opening anything, the reference itself is worth reading. It is built from parts that identify the regional tribunal office that heard the case, the type of case it was, and the year it was decided, so you can check you are looking at a pitch fee or notice dispute before you click through.

    A reference that does not fit this pattern, or returns nothing in the search, has usually been copied or typed wrong.

  3. Open the document itself

    The search result links through to the decision as a PDF, usually the full written determination. Check that the heading on the first page names the Property Chamber (residential property) and the reference you searched for, since a mistyped search can surface a result from an entirely different list.

A determination found this way is a record of what one tribunal decided on one set of facts, on the date it was decided. GOV.UK does not flag whether a decision has since been appealed or superseded, so check the date on the document before treating it as current.

What to look for in the reasoning

A tribunal determination answers one question: what the tribunal decided, and why. Reading it well means finding four things, and not settling for the summary at the top.

The facts the tribunal found

Before any provision is applied, the tribunal sets out what it accepted happened: the date of the notice, the condition of the site, what each side argued, and what evidence was put in front of it. Two parties can tell different stories about the same pitch fee review, and this is the part of the decision where you see which story the tribunal believed.

The provisions it applied

Next comes the law the tribunal used to reach its answer, such as the CPI presumption under paragraph 20(A1) or the paragraph 18(1) factors that can reduce it. A determination that refuses an increase, such as the Bungalow Park decision, usually turns on one of those factors outweighing the presumption. The presumption itself is rarely what is in question. A determination that holds a notice void, such as the Beechfield Park decision, turns instead on a procedural requirement under paragraph 17(2A) or paragraph 25A, and never reaches the fee at all.

The figure it determined

The figure is the number the tribunal actually ordered, stated with its unit, usually pounds per month. It sits apart from the figure the site owner proposed and the figure the resident offered. Check which of the three you are reading before you compare it to anything.

The paragraph numbers that carry the decision

Not every paragraph in a determination carries equal weight. Most of a decision sets out the background and the submissions each side made. The reasoning itself, where the tribunal explains why it reached that figure on those facts, is usually confined to a handful of numbered paragraphs near the end. Those are the paragraphs worth reading twice, because they show how a provision was applied to one set of facts.

What this page does not tell you

The tribunal publishes determinations on GOV.UK as the default position, and this site reads a number of them and sets out what each one decided. It has not gone through the whole run of published determinations and counted them, so it cannot tell you what proportion were refused, reduced or allowed in full. Anyone who states a proportion from a set they have not counted is making the number up, and that includes a figure that sounds reassuring.

What a determination actually is

A determination is a record of what one tribunal decided on one set of facts, for one pitch, on one review date. It tells you how that panel applied the provisions in front of it. It does not tell you what will happen on a different pitch, a different park, or a different fee notice, even where the wording of the notice looks the same.

Reading more than one

Where this site carries more than one determination on the same point, such as the Bungalow Park determination and the Beechfield Park determination, it sets out what each tribunal found and on what reasoning, side by side. Where two determinations reach different results on similar facts, the right response is to read both.

If you are trying to work out what a tribunal is likely to decide about your own pitch fee notice, the published determinations will show you how the relevant provisions have been applied elsewhere. They will not settle the question for you, and the policy background on current reviews can tell you where the rules themselves are under scrutiny, which is a separate question from how a tribunal applies the rules as they stand today.