The Willows General Management Ltd v Janet Hawkins

This is the Tribunal’s decision in two appeals brought with the permission of the First-tier Tribunal from decisions relating to the pitch fee payable in respect of mobile homes on protected sites to which the provisions of the Mobile Homes Act 1983 apply. The issue common to both these appeals is that the FTT decided that notices served by the appellant in order to review the pitch fee were invalid because when they were served the appellant was not the “site owner” as defined by the 1983 Act.

In each appeal the ownership structure of the site has been quite complicated and has recently been regularised; the difficulty for the appellant is that the re-arrangement of the various leasehold titles to the relevant land had not yet taken place when the notices in question were served.

The appeals have been decided under the Tribunal’s written representations procedure. The appellant was represented in both appeals by Mr David Sunderland, a director of both appellants; the respondents in each appeal have presented their own case.

The 1983 Act provides in paragraphs 16 to 20 of Schedule 1, Part 1, Chapter 2 that pitch fees on a protected site can be reviewed only once a year by the service of prescribed notices by the site owner, and that any increase is payable only if the resident agrees or if the FTT considers that it is reasonable for the pitch fee to be raised. The “owner” is defined in section 5 as :

“the person who, by virtue of an estate or interest held by him, is entitled to possession of the site or would be so entitled but for the rights of any persons to station mobile homes on land forming part of the site.”

Accordingly, the freeholder of a site is not the owner, for the purposes of the 1983 Act and the service of pitch fee review notices, if for example the freehold is subject to long leases so that absent the mobile homes the freeholder would not be entitled to possession of the site.

With that background I turn to the appeals, taking first the more straightforward of the two.

This appeal is about the pitch fees payable for a number of pitches on the site known as Beechfield Park and is brought by The Beaches Management Limited. The respondents occupy respectively pitches 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 14, 19 and 27. The agreements under which they occupy their pitches state that the pitch fee review date is 1 November each year. The appellant served pitch fee review notices on all the respondents dated 5 December 2022, stating that a new pitch fee would take effect from 5 January 2023 and that the fee would increase in line with the retail price index in line with the provision of paragraph 20 of Schedule 1, Chapter 2. The respondents did not agree the increase proposed and the appellant applied to the FTT for a determination. The FTT found that the pitch fee review notices were invalid because of the form in which they were sent. The appellant appealed, and this Tribunal overturned that finding in The Beaches Management Limited v Furbear and others [2024] UKUT 180 (LC). However, the Tribunal was not able to substitute its own decision about the pitch fee review because it was not clear how the appellant could be the site owner. The matter was remitted to the FTT.

The FTT decided the application in relation to the 2022 notices, together with a new application in relation to the 2023 notices, on 15 September 2025 after a hearing. It decided that neither set of notices was valid because at the relevant dates the appellant was not the site owner as defined in section 5 of the 1983 Act. The FTT said this:

“70.

The ownership structure of the site is complicated. … We set out below the ownerships as we understand prior to the recent transfer of the underleases which took place in May 2024:

Best Holdings (UK) Ltd: The freeholder of Beechfield since 17th May 2019.

The Beaches Management Ltd: The holder of the headlease of the entirety of Beechfield for a term commencing 1st January 2016 and ending 1st November 2067.

Wyldecrest Parks (Management) Ltd: On the face of some Written Statements, a contracting party, holds no identified interest in Beechfield.

Silver Lakes Property Investment Ltd (“SLP”): The leaseholder of pitch 17 Beechfield for a term commencing on 1st July 2013 until 1st September 2053.

Silk Tree Properties Ltd (“STP”): The leaseholder of pitches 1- 16, 18- 25 and 27- 33 Beechfield for a term commencing 1st December 1995 until 1st November 2027.

Sussex Mobile Homes Ltd (“SMH”): The holder since 27th October 2006 of the lease of pitch 26 on Beechfield for a term commencing 1st September 2006 until 31st August 2046.

71.

Each of the Respondents occupies subject to a written agreement.

72.

It is common ground that at the date of service of all the Pitch Fee Review notices which are the subject to these applications, whether in 2022 or 2023, the Underleases were all held by parties other than the Applicant. At the date of service of the notices the Applicant held a head lease of the whole site.

What appears to have happened is that at the relevant dates in 2022 and 2023 the appellant held a lease of the whole site subject to a number of underleases each of one or more pitches. So in relation to each individual pitch the title comprised the freeholder, the appellant’s headlease, an underlease, and the occupier’s agreement – which, confusingly, was not made with any of the above-named companies but with Wyldecrest Parks Management Limited. That discrepancy does not matter because the site owner is bound by the agreement.

But what is perfectly clear from the above analysis is that at the date of the pitch fee review notices in 2022 and 2023 the appellant was not a person who, absent the mobile homes agreements, would have been entitled to possession of the site.

The appellant does not challenge that analysis. Instead, its only argument in the appeal is the following:

“In not giving credence to the Council’s decision to grant the Appellant a Licence as being satisfactory evidence of their having sufficient interest in the land given the requirements of the Mobile Homes Site Licencing (England) Regulations 2014, the FtT erred in law.

At Section 5 of the Mobile Homes Act the Site Owner (and party to the agreements) is defined in the same terms as Section 1(4) of the Caravan Sites and Control of Developments Act (the occupier) and the Appellant meets with that requirement as the occupier of the land.”

The regulation of protected sites is achieved by the 1983 Act together with the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1990, which requires a site licence to be obtained from the local authority for use of land as a caravan site. It provides at section 3:

“(1)

An application for the issue of a site licence in respect of any land may be made by the occupier thereof to the local authority in whose area the land is situated.”

The appellant’s point has already been considered by the Tribunal (HHJ Alan Johns KC) in Marigolds Management Limited v Barnes and others [2026] UKIT 186 (LC)).

“13.

It must be acknowledged that the definition in [the 1960 Act] of the person required to hold a site licence, referred to as the "occupier", includes words like those in the definition of owner in the 1983 Act. Section 1(3) of the 1960 Act provides that,

"In this Part of this Act the expression 'occupier' means, in relation to any land, the person who, by virtue of an estate or interest therein held by him, is entitled to possession thereof or would be so entitled but for the rights of any other person under any licence granted in respect of the land:

Provided that where land amounting to not more than four hundred square yards in area is let under a tenancy entered into with a view to the use of the land as a caravan site, the expression 'occupier'  means in relation to that land the person who would be entitled to possession of the land but for the rights of any person under that tenancy."

14.

But that suggests merely either that the Council was wrong to grant a licence to [the appellant] or that the grant resulted from the operation of the proviso, which has no counterpart in s.5 of the 1983 Act. And it is not anyway known what information was given to the Council. The grant of a licence certainly in no way bound the FTT to find that [the appellant] was in law the owner for the purposes of the 1983 Act. That was a question for the FTT to answer. For the reasons I have given, I am satisfied that it did so correctly.”

As can be seen, “occupier” is defined by the 1990 Act in similar terms to those used to define an “owner” in section 5 of the 1983 Act. The appellant’s point is that if it satisfies the definition for the purposes of the 1990 Act it must do so for the purposes of the 1983 Act too.

I agree with HHJ Johns’ analysis; the local authority’s decision to grant a licence – for whatever reasons that decision was made - is not relevant to the validity of the pitch fee review notices. The appeal fails.

In their response to the grounds of appeal the respondents have raised a number of other maters which trouble them, including issues about the site licence. They are not within the scope of the appellant’s appeal and the Tribunal cannot comment on them.

14 The Willows Park is a pitch on The Willows where the respondent, Ms Hawkins’, mobile home is stationed. The appellant served on her a pitch fee review notice on 23 September 2023. The respondent did not agree the increase and the appellant applied to the FTT for a determination. Two further notices were served on 23 September 2024, one on the assumption that the 2023 notice was valid (and therefore calculating the indexed increase by reference to the proposed increased fee for 2023) and the other on the assumption that the 2023 notice was not valid and therefore calculating the indexation on the basis of the pitch fee as it stood before the proposed 2023 increase. A further application was made to the FTT in respect of the 2024 notices and the FTT determined both applications together.

The respondent in her response to the application in the FTT challenged the proposed new pitch fees on a number of grounds; and she complained about the confusing ownership structure at The Willows, but did not challenge the notices on that basis. The appellant explained the ownership of the park and as a result the FTT decided that the 2023 notice was invalid but that the 2024 notice was valid. It rejected the respondent’s other arguments and there is no cross-appeal from that rejection.

The appellant appeals, with the permission of the FTT , on the ground that it was not prepared to have to prove title at the hearing before the FTT and should be able to produce copies of the relevant titles.

The appellant made an application to the Tribunal for permission to adduce new evidence in the form of copies of the land register, appending to its application a copy, but not an official copy, of its title to The Willows under a long lease. Permission was granted on condition that the appellant produce official copies of land registry entries for all the relevant leasehold titles.

The appellant has now done so, and the titles produced reveal the same curious structure that we saw at Beechfield Park; the appellant holds a long lease of the whole site, granted in 2016 and to expire in 2084, subject to 40-year leases of individual pitches. I can summarise as follows:

Therefore the FTT was correct; the appellant was the site owner when it served the notice in 2024. But in September 2023 it was not the owner as defined in the 1983 Act, with a right to possess the pitch but for the mobile home agreement because at that date the 40-year lease of the pitch had not yet been assigned to it.

The appellant raises again the argument about the site licence, since it is the licence holder; I have already addressed that argument in the context of Beechfield Park and it is not arguable. The appeal fails.

I said above that the FTT rejected the respondent’s other challenges to the pitch fee review notices. Having decided that the 2023 notice was invalid but that the 2024 notice was valid the FTT concluded that it was reasonable for the pitch fee to increase as proposed in the notice served on the assumption that the 2023 notice was invalid, so that the pitch fee for 14 The Willows increased by 2.20% from £252.35 per month to £257.90 per month from 1 November 2024. That decision now takes effect.