[2025] UKUT 00018 (LC)

This appeal raises two issues about the sort of decrease in the amenity of a protected site which can displace the statutory presumption that pitch fees payable by occupiers of mobile homes will increase annually in accordance with inflation. It also illustrates the difficulty facing the First-tier Tribunal, Property Chamber (the FTT) when it is asked to determine a new pitch fee in a case where the statutory presumption has been displaced.

The appeal is against a decision of the FTT made in respect of four pitches on a protected site at Hillbury Park in Hampshire (the Park). The owner of the Park, Southern County Parks Ltd, initiated an annual review of pitch fees with effect from 1 July 2023 by serving notices in respect of all 72 pitches on the Park proposing an increase of 11.4%, in line with the increase in the retail prices index for the year to April 2023. The occupiers of four pitches refused to agree these increases and the owner applied to the FTT for a determination of the new pitch fees for those pitches.

In its decision published on 18 July 2024 the FTT determined that there should be no increase in the pitch fees payable by Ms Saxton and Mr Young for No. 4a, or by Mrs Fay for No. 69, and that the increase for No. 13, occupied by Mrs Bird, and for No. 16, occupied by Mr and Mrs Burden, should be 5.7%.

The FTT was satisfied that the nil increase in the pitch fees for Nos. 4a and 69 was appropriate because of problems which the occupiers of those pitches had experienced during and after periods of heavy rainfall when water failed to drain away and instead accumulated on their pitches or on the road immediately in front of them. The pitches are at opposite ends of the Park but experienced similar localised difficulties.

No. 69 immediately adjoins No. 4a, while No. 13 is at a little distance from it, but in common with the rest of the Park they depend for their only access in and out on the road running in front of No. 4a. It was the tendency of that road to flood from time to time which, in the FTT’s view, justified limiting the increase for those pitches to only half of the annual rate of inflation.

The FTT took the view that the localised and intermittent inundation or waterlogging of individual pitches or difficulties of access had all got worse and were a “decrease in the amenity of the site” within the meaning of paragraph 18(1)(aa) of the statutory implied terms on which the pitches were occupied. In view of that decrease in amenity it concluded that the pitch fees should not increase by the rate of inflation but should be frozen for a year for those most seriously affected, and, for others, should be limited to half the rate which would apply if the presumption of an RPI increase had not been displaced.

The Park owner’s main case on this appeal, for which permission was given by the FTT, is that it was not open to the FTT to treat so localised and intermittent a problem as a relevant decrease in amenity. Ms Victoria Osler, who appears on behalf of the owner, argues that only a decrease in amenity which affects the whole or a substantial part of a protected site all or most of the time is within the scope of paragraph 18(1)(aa). She also challenges the FTT’s approach to valuation and suggests that the panel moved impermissibly from a decision that there had been a significant decrease in amenity to its conclusion that there should be no increase or only a restricted increase without asking itself what, if any, increase would be reasonable having regard to all of the relevant circumstances.

None of the residents of the Park attended the hearing of the appeal, although all of them other than Mrs Bird had filed respondent’s notices explaining why they considered the FTT’s decision was correct. At the hearing Ms Osler withdrew the appeal in relation to Mrs Bird’s pitch, No. 13, because she has recently sold her home and moved away from the Park so that the pitch fee determined by the FTT for her pitch is no longer payable in any event.