A MUM claims she is being forced out of her caravan park home over a pitch fee mix-up.
Martine Carrington says she and her son will have nowhere to go next month when their agreement with Park Holidays comes to an end and they are booted off site.
The pair have lived in their static home near Hastings, East Sussex, since late June last year.
She claims she thought she had paid six months up front for her seaside pitch, with monthly instalments then coming out by direct debit from January 2022.
But after no money left her account last month, she raised her concerns and discovered she was in fact four months in arrears after a bank error blamed on staff shortages due to Covid.
Despite offering to pay the difference, Martine claims she was told it was too late and she needed to move out of Beauport Park as soon as possible.
Martine, 59, said: “I’m being evicted. It’s a living nightmare.
“The stress of this all, trying to get my van offsite, the costs involved and having to find somewhere to live, is too much.
“Plus the fact I could lose everything, my life savings.”
The mum-of-one now faces having to sell her home, which she paid £53,500 for, for a bargain price just to get rid of it – and having nowhere else to go when she does.
“I find it incomprehensible that a company such as Park Holidays treats their customers in such a manner, it’s beyond belief,” she said.
“It’s all very damaging to my health at 59 years of age.”
A spokesperson for Park Holidays UK said Martine’s contract was being terminated due to a “breach”.
They added: “As required by the terms of the contract to which she agreed, the customer was to begin direct debit payments for her 2022 holiday home pitch fees in late September 2021.
“No payment was received, and there is no evidence to suggest that Park Holidays UK was in any way responsible for the funds failing to arrive.
“If there is an issue here, it is one which needs to be resolved between the customer and her bank.
“The customer was contacted by letter and advised that we had not received payment of the agreed amount.
“Nothing was heard, and subsequent correspondence was sent asking that she make good the payments in accordance with the terms her contract.
“She still made no contact with us, or attempted to remedy the default.
“In early February this year, we had no alternative but to issue the customer with a pre-termination letter which gave notice of the need for her to remove her holiday home from the park’s grounds.
“It will be noted that at this point some four months had passed since her direct debit had failed, and the company had still received no restitution.
“Even at this point it would have been possible for her to have ended the matter by discharging her obligation to us.”
They added that Martine arrived at the company’s head office in Bexhill-on-Sea unannounced on February 8 and claimed she was rude to staff.
She was subsequently asked to leave the premises as Park Holidays “will not tolerate the abuse of our employees”.
“The customer was in gross breach of the conditions in her contract regarding her behaviour towards our staff, and it was for this reason that the agreement was terminated,” they added.
