Jim's Jottings

Our editor muses on just about everything to do with Park Homes

5 November 2009

I often think that being the owner of a park home is like being a Crofter in the Scottish Highlands.  Of course park home residents do not work the land but in property terms we are similar.  We both own our homes but we do not own the land on which it stands; we both eventually answer to a landlord through the payment of rent and often suffer the same problems of a landlord trying to tell us how to live our lives.  In this regard, the 2003 Land Reform Act in Scotland paved the way to putting things right.  Crofting Communities could gain the right to buy their community land and here at Willow Wood we have also registered a Community Right to Buy.  There is another similarity -  Crofters and Park Home Owners are minorities.  There are some 12,500 Crofters in Scotland and some 4500 Park Home residents - out of a total Scottish population of around six million.  There the similarity ends.  Over the past 50 years tens of millions of pounds have been spent on crofting communities - they have their own Commission - but not a penny on park home dwellers.

It is welcome news indeed therefore, that the Scottish Government is now turning it's mind to tackling some of the wrongs suffered by park home dwellers.  We are not looking for millions of pounds but we do look  for fair play and the same protections offered to other householders and to crofters!