Have you been living in your holiday home for over 10 years? Can you prove it by the fact that you get your post delivered to you, or your kids have gone to the local school, or you travel to and from work, or you have paid council tax, or registered at the local Doctors surgery etc?

 

If you have, then have you thought about applying to the planning department for a 'certificate of lawful use' for your holiday caravan as a residential caravan?

 

Whilst we are certainly not experts in planning law, there are certain things that keep cropping up in relation to this issue.

 

Since covid has highlighted many owners clearly use their caravans as their main residential address (for whatever reason), it appears the BH&HPA solicitors have been advising Parks how to deal with such residential use as there is significant risk to the Park Owners. Hence we have been seeing a lot of letters sent out by all companies trying to terminate owners' agreements for breaching their agreements.

 

Firstly allowing your use is a breach of their planning permission. They can be prosecuted and are now desperate to cover their arses at your expense.

 

Secondly, acquiescing to your use, that is failing to address it whilst having the full knowledge it was going on, could actually have altered the terms of your agreement. You could argue that as such they have agreed by their lack of action to allow you to live there. The number of years and examples, as per the first paragraph would be proof that this is the case.

 

Thirdly you may have heard the urban myth about the '10 year rule', that if you have been openly living in your caravan as your residence for 10 years you gain certain rights. The onus is on the planning authority to challenge any change of use of the land, from Holiday Park to Residential, within 10 years, and sometimes within 4 years. If they fail to do so they lose the right to challenge.

 

To quote Tozzers  "After 10 years of residential use, an owner may apply for a certificate of lawful use which is the equivalent of planning permission. We argue that this does not give the owner Mobile Homes Act protection, but the tide may be turning on this."  

 

So if you are one of these unfortunate owners we would suggest you to seek advice about applying for a 'certificate of lawful use' for your holiday caravan and pitch to be recognised as a Residential Caravan and pitch. After all the Companies have been banging on about how you only rent the pitch which your caravan is on , so what is to stop you applying for a change of use of that pitch as the licence holding user of it?

 

We would suggest that if this is happening to a number of users on a park then you, as a group, contact Shelter and seek advice, or a local planning advisor company, who make applications for such things. You could do it yourself and we think that once the process has started then it may delay any action they can take on the matter, until the process has been properly investigated and decided on. That could take up to 2 years or more as if the council planning department does not accept it then you can appeal to the Planning Inspectorate for a hearing on the matter. They are a relatively straightforward process for most planning applications and easy to provide your evidence to etc.

 

Gotta be worth a bit of effort rather than losing your home, simply because these greedy, unethical companies are trying to cover their arses and what they’ve been up to for years. Misselling.

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