Who said What

The results from the consultation (on proposed changes to the Mobile Homes Act) have been published and are worth having a look through. So the final proposals will be influenced by this as I understand. Waiting now to hear comments on the responses.....

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Built-Environment/Housing/privateowners/Residentialmobilehomes

Be part Of Better

Met with MSP today and had interesting discussion about the progress of amendments to the Mobile Homes Act and the recent Policy Cosultation Paper. It will be interesting to read what feedback was received due to the consultation and hopefully this will influence the final amendment in a positive way. It is a fine balance of course between the parks remaining a viable proposition for owners and giving the residents a fair deal and security. All the stakeholders had an opportunity to respond to the Paper and this will make it particulaly worth seeing the detail. The timescale of the implementation of the amendment is also encouranging as a draft SSI exists it could become law by end of year or early next. Lets hope it is worth waiting for and that it has some way of being enforced.

Want to buy a KWh?

Still struggling with this idea of paying 23p for each unit of electricity we use. Looking around all the providers sites I can't see anything that works out as high as this, well perhaps for the first bunch of units but then a drop to a lower charge for the rest. When they sort out the 20% VAT they are charging on and remove the climate levy it should go down a bit admittedly. I asked a friend on mine that has a fairly large caravan site and their units work out at 8p for the pitches and 17p for the business units. This is just dividing the total bill by the number of units used. It is a tricky situation really as the residents have no say over the provider that is chosen or the pricing plan so what can we do but trust this is the best deal - at the moment it does not feel like it.
On a positive front the weeds were sprayed yesterday so maybe they will keel over soon, if the rain today didn't wash them clean that is. There is a bunch of Japanese Knotweed lurking on the river bank - now that is an impressive weed! I'm sure it followed me through the park the other night.

Need for change

Before buying a park home I spent a long time looking around the Internet to get an idea of how secure we would feel living on a park. There is a lot of negative information but I thought we would be really unlucky to find ourselves with an unscrupulous park owner. Also after reading through the Mobile Homes Act I felt reasurred although there were some aspects that still worried me or that I felt were unfair.
We went ahead and have a lovely place to stay that is not too costly to run and over the last two years has been almost all we had hoped for. A change of owners seemed to be encouraging, as anything I could find out about them looked positive. I hope our experiences so far are not typical of what we can expect in the future.

I'm not saying that buying a park home is a bad idea, we are still very pleased with what we have bought and where we live. All we expect is that all legalities are observed and we are treated with some consideration and really just as a valued customer. Something is needed in the Act that covers these homes in a fair way that still allows the owners to make a profit while protecting and enforcing the rights of the residents.

Not Bothered

One of our residents took on this issue of the rights to enter our home and called a senior manager. I find it quite worrying that this manager insists that they (the owners or an employee) have legal right of access to enter a home in the same way as they have the right to come on to a pitch (in Scotland). I understand that during a subsequent call with another resident that the same manager was still claiming these same rights. Is the Act open to interpretation in this way? As far as I am aware all the sources that have been consulted say no, they do not have this right of access to enter a home. This needs clarification from an indisputable source one way or the other.

Just anticipating

Well, lots of support through questions in the forums and also from indignant friends and family as I tell them the story. It all helps of course and we will see what the week brings as I have sent off various communications to the Legal’s and Political’s. I suppose it might seem an over-reaction but it is such a basic right that no one has access to your home without your permission that it has riled me when I'm not someone that is easily riled. My telephone call to the person making the claim of access rights might be returned but I don’t expect so.  

Warm air where?

On the subject of green savings I though it was about time to clean the filters on our heat recovery system and to stop thinking about mismanagement. We have fitted these systems to our last three homes and other than a bit of crawling about in lofts with ducting they are quite easy to do. Basically the 'stale' air is drawn from the kitchen and bathrooms and fresh air blown into the other rooms. The clever bit is that the stale air is passed through a heat exchanger and this warms the air coming back in. In theory this can recover 80% or more of the heat, the house stays fresh and no open windows let the precious heat escape. Running costs are very low as the fans are super efficient and in most unit the heat exchanger is passive and uses no power.
It would take a long time to recover the cost of installation but the air quality is worth buying.

Up tae 23p

Aye well the man arrived unannounced as expected and set our meter to 23p a unit. Not his fault of course he was doing as he was told but I think management have a fear of paper as we have seen nothing actually written down. What happens next we will have to wait and see. Strikes me that this is way to make all electricity users think green. What can we turn off now? Do we need the oven to cook this? How much of a load can the washing machine take? This has become a challenge to see how little we can use.

Legally hot day

A bit too hot today but not worrying as it will be back to normal tomorrow. The keyboard got a bit hot as well as I browsed around the Mobile Homes Act. Everything I see says that the park owner has no right of access to the home itself. They do to the Pitch, which is fair enough. We will have no problem letting folks in if they tell us what they want to do and arrange a suitable time. Anyway, fired off a letter to their legal department - it was not easy to find the head office address, I find that worrying. More about this later.
Watched the ducks playing with our on-site weeds. Well at least they like them.

Welcome - anytime?

Oh well a bit of a stushie today I hear. It seems the manager was on the site to configure the meters. But we were supposed to be told beforehand. Even if I was here I would have said no. The owners say their manager has access to the homes anytime they like (well 9 to 5). Can that really be right? I thought they could get on the grounds (or the Pitch as they call it, not happy about that either!) but not inside the home. Tell me first Eh - it is only polite. Will have to find out more about this as I'm not happy with the thought of someone having access on demand. Anyway the sun is supposed be out tomorrow - just a quick visit before the weekend apparently. And we have notification of the changes that have to be made to the meter - well someone told somebody so that makes it official. Hmmm more later.

Going Up?

Not sure what is happening with electricity charges now. A rumour is going about that the cost-per-unit will double or more. It seems we were to be advised of the new rates and when they were going to change them but the manager was on the park trying to do it yesterday completely unannounced. Nobody has had notification of what the new rate will be either. Not looking good! The weeds are also still getting longer...