Residential Property Tribunals – experience so far...

Tuesday, 20 September 2011 00:00

The new system for dealing with mobile homes disputes has been up and running for over 4 months now and we have seen a significant number of Residential Property Tribunal applications crossing our desks. Residents have clearly welcomed the new, faster, cheaper method of settling disputes and have been quick off the mark to get their applications into the "RPT". We have been very busy helping park owners to defend those applications.

But our experience so far is that it is not all in favour of the residents, which was a concern when the changes were announced. Park owners are using the new system to deal promptly with pitch fee disputes where residents have failed to agree a pitch fee review, and where before in the court system pitch fee disputes could rage for many years, park owners are finding the quicker resolution of the pitch fee to be in their favour. The years of wrangling which can lead to ingrained bad feeling on the park will now often be reduced to a matter of a few short months. The impact of that is yet to be seen, but this will hopefully bear fruit for our park owner clients.

Clearly there have been a few teething problems, but that was to be expected whilst the RPT finds its feet with Mobile Homes Act 1983 applications. In particular we have had some difficulties with getting timely responses to questions we have asked the RPT, but it is likely that they, like we, are very busy dealing with all the new applications and once the system has been operating for a little longer it is likely that will be resolved.

It was thought that the "RPT"s would be very resident friendly, and it can seem to be the case as many more allowances seem to be made for the residents, but equally we are finding that park owners who present well reasoned arguments, based on good evidence, seem to be listened to, and this is something that we (and of course park owners) welcome.