Can my park owner site a home closer than six metres to mine?
- Monday, 19 November 2007
- 1 Comments
Our park is in the middle of redevelopment and new bases are being put down. I have managed to keep the nearest base exactly six metres from my home, which I believe is the legal requirement.
These bases are for holiday homes and I think they are residents as they live here for 10 months of the year.
There are over 150 caravans on site, a handful of which are classed as fully residential, including mine. The rest have to vacate for seven weeks.
My question is that this nearest base to me has had an extra four feet added to it to accommodate a veranda. Are they able to do this?
It should be noted that the current Model Standards are split into two. The first part relates to holiday caravan sites and the second to permanent residential sites. The standards make it clear that where sites are mixed the standard for residential sites apply.
The distance between homes provided by the Standard relating to residential use is six metres, therefore the six metres between your home and the adjacent holiday base will comply with the Model Standards.
However, the same standards also provide that if a garage, shed or covered storage space is allowed within that distance requirement, they should be on non-combustible construction.
It appears that your park owner intends surrounding the adjacent holiday home with a veranda which will protrude outward and towards your home by four feet. I can only assume that the proposed veranda is constructed of timber, as usual. If this is the case then in my opinion it's potentially a fire hazard and the local council should prohibit its erection. You might care to discuss the matter with the council site licensing officer.
January 09 07:16
David Couch
It would appear that the model standards you refer to is not worthy of the paper it is written on, I say this because we had a similar issue with our brand new park home. The park owner took part of the adjacent properties pitch with the home owners agreement, the park owner had agreed to move his home over by 1 metre in order to site our new home. When we measured the distance wall to wall we found that the distance was only 5 meters. The property also has a 1 metre wide wooden porch, therfore making the distance from his porch to our external wall only 4 metres.
Needless to say this promise to move the adjacent property over by 1 metre to comply with the model standard has never taken place, we understand that the home owner has written to the park owner twice about this isuue and never received the courtesay of a reply.
This did concern us so we contacted the local authority who visited us, we were surprised by the answer we were given, basically saying that the adjacent property was so old that to move it would most probably damage it and make it un-inhapitable for the occupier.
In which case the park owner has knowingly placed us at risk by siting our new home within 4 metres of an anjoinging property and has not acted within the model standards. It would appear that he local Council are not willing to act on this issue, other than to approach the park owner who states that the adjoining property will be moved in the fullness of time. This stance the local authority appears to have accepted.
Would welcome any further comments on this matter.