[2024] UKUT 11 (LC)

The 1983 Act applies to any agreement under which the occupier is entitled to station a mobile home on a protected site and to occupy it as his or her only or main residence. So in order to invoke any of the provisions of the 1983 Act a person must have an agreement by which he is entitled to live in a mobile home on a protected site. There are two ingredients there: (1) entitlement to station a mobile home and to occupy it as an only or main residence, and (2) the protected site.

As to the second ingredient, section 1 of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 prohibits the use of land as a caravan site without a licence granted by the local authority, and section 5A(5) of the 1960 Act defines a “protected site” as:

“ land in respect of which a site licence is required under this Part, other than land in respect of which the relevant planning permission under Part 3 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 or the site licence is, subject to subsection (6)—

(a)

expressed to be granted for holiday use only, or

(b)

otherwise so expressed or subject to such conditions that there are times of the year when no caravan may be stationed on the land for human habitation.”

As to the first ingredient, the FTT concluded from the terms of the copy Licence Agreements supplied (the one supplied by Mr Robling being unsigned) that the two appellants were not entitled to live on the site in their mobile homes as their only or main residence.

The FTT’s two rule 9 notices, and its two decisions striking out the applications, rest on that latter point and on the terms of the Licence Agreements. There is a mention of the fact that the FTT would also have needed to be satisfied that the site was a protected site, but no finding was made about that by the FTT. The respondent sent a copy of the site licence to the FTT in response to its direction, and in view of the definition of a protected site set out above the terms of the site licence are relevant to whether this is a protected site, but the FTT said nothing about it in its eventual order. In his statement of case in the appeal, Mr Doe argued that the two appellants’ mobile homes are stationed on land that is not a protected site and relied upon the wording of the FTT’s permission to appeal to argue that both elements in section 1(1) of the 1983 Act are in issue in the appeal.

In my judgment the FTT in giving its rule 9 notices gave no consideration to whether the appellants’ mobile homes are stationed on a protected site; and in striking out the two applications the FTT said nothing about the site licence nor about whether the land in question is a protected site. The FTT has heard no evidence on the point and it is not open to this Tribunal on an appeal to make a decision on a point that has not been decided by the FTT. Accordingly, the issue in the appeals is whether the FTT was right to strike out the applications on the basis that the two appellants are not entitled to live in their mobile homes as their only or main residence.