Stanton and others v Fury Developments Ltd

Park homes – Utilities – Smart meter – Appellants required to pay administration charges relating to collection of utility payments for mobile homes – Appellants required to pay charges direct to third party agent – FTT finding respondent entitled to make administration charges – Appellants appealing – Whether respondent entitled to charge for administration of charges for gas and electricity by itself or by third party – Appeals allowed The four appellants in conjoined appeals lived in mobile homes at Home Farm Park, Nantwich, Cheshire. They appealed against decisions of the First-tier Tribunal about their liability to pay administration charges in connection with the supply of gas and electricity to their homes. There was a supply of electricity to the site and gas in the form of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) delivered to a tank. Each mobile home had a meter recording its consumption of electricity and LPG. In July 2022, a third party (POW) was engaged by the respondent site owner to install pre-payment smart meters for LPG and electricity on each pitch and provide administration services for site, including metering arrangements. Residents who refused to have a smart meter had to pay an additional charge of £20 for the monthly manual meter reading (amounting to £240 per year); residents with smart meters were required to pay an additional 41p per day for each utility by way of administration charge direct to POW. The appellants each applied to the FTT under section 4 of the Mobile Homes Act 1983 to determine questions arising under the new arrangements. The FTT found that the respondent was entitled to charge for manual meter reading, albeit at a rate of £10 per visit rather than £20, and to impose the daily administration charge for each utility. The appellants appealed. Held: The appeals were allowed. (1) The regulation of park homes through the 1983 Act was designed to provide as straightforward a charging structure as possible. Terms implied by the 1983 Act prevailed over any express terms of the written statements between the occupiers and the site owners insofar as they were inconsistent. It was not in dispute that this was a protected site regulated by the 1983 Act so that terms were implied in their agreements by that Act. Paragraph 21 of schedule 1 to the 1983 Act provided that the occupier should pay to the owner all sums due under the agreement in respect of gas, electricity, water, sewerage or other services supplied by the owner. The “pitch fee” was defined by paragraph 29 as: “…the amount which the occupier is required by the agreement to pay to the owner for the right to station the mobile home on the pitch … but does not include amounts due in respect of gas, electricity, water and sewerage or other services, unless the agreement expressly provides that the pitch fee includes such amounts”. Clause 3(b) of the appellants’ agreements required the occupier to: “pay and discharge all general and/or water rates which may from time to time be assessed charged or payable in respect of the mobile home or the pitch (and/or a proportionate part thereof where the same are assessed in respect of the residential part of the park) and charges in respect of electricity gas … and other services”. (2) The question in this case was whether, in the absence of any express general service charge provision, the implied and express terms in the appellants’ agreements allowed the respondent to make any charges for the administration of utilities, as distinct from the actual cost of the gas and electricity itself. The Tribunal and the Court of Appeal had held that neither the statutory implied terms, nor an express term, permitted a site owner to charge to the occupiers more than the price it had itself paid for gas (whether LPG or not) and electricity to the utility provider. Those terms did not enable it to make any separate administration charge for its work in reading meters, calculating charges and so on; they were covered by the pitch fee. In the absence of a right for the park owner to charge a separate fee for the provision of some service which the agreement obliged the owner to provide, the pitch fee payable by the occupier was consideration for the performance of all such obligations of the owner and was in return for all of the benefits received by the occupier under the agreement: Re Britanniacrest Ltd [2013] UKUT 521 (LC) and Britanniacrest Ltd v Bamborough [2016] UKUT 144 (LC); [2016] PLSCS 117 applied. (3) The only charge that the owner could pass on to the occupier for electricity or gas was the unit cost charged to the site owner by the external supplier. Therefore, paragraph 3(b), and the implied term at paragraph 21, required the occupier to reimburse the site owner for the actual costs to the site owner of gas and electricity as charged by the utility provider itself, and did not require payment of any form of administration charge to the site owner nor the reimbursement of any payment to any third party other than the utility provider. Clause 3(b) and paragraph 21, entitled the site owner only to recover from the occupier the unit cost of gas and electricity that it paid itself to the utility provider. No other charge was authorised; all administration costs were subsumed in the pitch fee in the absence of an express provision for a service charge. POW was not a utility provider and the site owner was not entitled to pass on POW’s charges to the occupiers: PR Hardman & Partners v Greenwood [2015] UKUT 587 (LC); [2015] PLSCS 321, [2017] EWCA Civ 52; [2017] PLSCS 32 applied. (4) The respondent was not entitled to charge the occupiers for the administration of charges for gas and electricity, whether it did it itself or by a third party. The FTT had misunderstood what the UT and the Court of Appeal said in PR Hardman. That misunderstanding led to the position that, while the site owner could not charge for his own administration, he could create a liability to a third party for that administration and then charge the occupiers just because a third party was involved, which was obviously wrong. All four appeals succeeded. If any of the appellants had made payments in respect of manual meter readings, or paid the 41p daily charge at any stage, those payments would have to be reimbursed by the respondent (whether or not they were paid to POW, since POW acted only as its agent). Tim Selley (of WBW Solicitors) appeared for the appellants; Sophie Ava (of Immisol Solicitors) appeared for the respondent. Eileen O’Grady, barrister Click here to read a transcript of Stanton and others v Fury Developments Ltd