Mobile Homes: child rights and wellbeing impact assessment screening

CRWIA Stage 1 – Screening

Brief Summary

Policy Aim

The policy aim is to ensure that the protections relating to pitch fee uprating for residents of residential mobile homes remain fair, appropriate and in line with development of statistical measures of inflation. This contributes to the national outcome that we live in communities that are inclusive empowered, resilient, and safe.

The Mobile Homes Act 1983 (and related regulations) control the “consumer” rights of mobile homeowners. It sets out terms which must appear in the “written statement”. These include the arrangements for changing pitch fees. The pitch fee is the amount which the resident is required by their agreement to pay to the site owner for use of the pitch and wider site, maintenance and certain services.

At present the presumption is that pitch fees do not change by more than the increase or decrease in the Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation. The cost of living crisis and a campaign by residents has highlighted the impact of the gap between different inflation measures on pitch fee inflation and that the RPI is no longer judged to be a reliable measure of inflation^[1]. As a result, a commitment was made during the passage of the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) Scotland Act 2022 to consult on changing the basis of pitch fee uprating from the RPI to the Consumer Prices Index (CPI).

A consultation^[2] was undertaken in spring 2023 and proposed the CPI as a robust alternative to RPI as it is widely forecast and used for uprating, including of pensions and benefits. The consultation sought views to inform decisions on whether:

• it would be more appropriate for the presumption for annual increases in pitch fees to be set in line with the CPI rather than the RPI or the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH);
• the change should apply to agreements that are made in the future only or to both existing and future agreements; and
• it would be appropriate for ministers to be able to update the index in future via secondary rather than primary legislation, to keep pace with developments in statistics.

The consultation ran from January to April 2023 and received 171 responses in total. Organisations accounted for 12 responses and there were 159 from individuals, almost all of whom identified themselves as residents of mobile home sites. The consultation analysis was published in June 2023.

The Housing (Scotland) Bill proposes the following amendments to the Mobile Homes Act 1983:

1. Change the basis of pitch fee uprating from the Retail Prices Index (RPI) to the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) for existing and future contracts.

2. Update the mechanism for making changes to the inflation index in future so as to enable the change to be made via secondary legislation, in order to facilitate timely changes as required and;

3. Provide protection for residents should a site owner seek to undertake activity to compensate for the loss of income as a result of the change to indexation.

The Bill also adjusts section 5 of the 1983 Act to remove references to gypsy and traveller sites that are no longer needed as a consequence of previous changes to the law in relation to these sites.

The proposed changes will affect residents living on sites licenced as permanent residential sites and Gypsy/Travellers on public Gypsy/Traveller sites.

Start date of relevant proposal: Shortly after Royal Assent.

Start date of CRWIA process: February 2023.