A pensioner who used her life savings to buy a “new” park home says it has turned out to be a “deathtrap” that could have already been more than 20 years old.

Christine Price sold her house in Sittingbourne and moved to RoyaleLife’s Reculver Court near Herne Bay in 2018.

Wanting to be closer to her son, the 69-year-old had hoped to enjoy her retirement at the seaside caravan park.

But the pensioner now believes the home could in fact be at least 27 years old after an electrician discovered a record dating her fusebox back to 1996.

Electrical wiring also pre-dates 2005 colour changes, and the manufacturer of the home says it has no record of making units of the same specification since at least 2010.

Ms Price told KentOnline: “It’s basically ruined my life moving here.

“I bought here because it’s near my son and it’s near the beach. It seemed to have everything, but it's a deathtrap.”

Ms Price says she was initially happy with the home, which she purchased for £175,000 after selling her house, and was looking forward to enjoying her new life by the sea.

But as she settled into retirement and began to decorate her new residence, she began to notice things inside the property that did not make sense for a newly manufactured property.

At first Ms Price took RoyaleLife’s explanations for nails in the walls and outdated fittings at face value – but she says things took a turn when she decided to replace some wallpaper.

When she scraped off the old paper she found the wall underneath was made of plywood, when she says she had been told the structure was made with plasterboard.

She then found a clear patch showing that a large repair had been previously made in the wall.

Then after closely examining her property she found other clues, including a now defunct BT hook-up, a huge stockpile of waste hidden under the floor and that the serial number that can be required to sell a park home was missing.

After three years of growing suspicions that she may have been sold a refurbished unit, Ms Price took her evidence to a RoyaleLife representative, who she says initially dismissed her fears.

Ms Price claims it was then conceded the home was in fact manufactured five years before she bought it, but was told she had been informed of this at the time of the purchase but must have forgotten this detail.

However, in Ms Price’s lease, the date of manufacture of the Omar Oulton park home has been listed by RoyaleLife as 2017.

Omar, the company which manufactured the park home, told KentOnline the Oulton model is now discontinued and a unit with the same specifications as Ms Price’s has not come off its production line since its digital records began in 2010.

Ms Price’s suspicions were then further confirmed at the end of last year.

After her oven failed on Christmas Day and fearing that under the freshly refurbished interior the structure of her home was dangerously out of date, Ms Price asked an electrician to come in and check it was safe.

Not only did he find several dangerous electrical flaws putting the pensioner’s safety at risk, he also estimated the age of the wiring as at least 27 years old.

He was able to make this assessment in part due to changes in legal requirements for electricians, in particular that the designated colours for wiring were changed in 2005 and this property was wired with the now defunct shades.

The electrical review, which deemed the property “unsatisfactory”, also discovered a document alongside the fuse box stating it was last checked by an electrician in 1996.

Some conductive elements were found to be dangerously exposed and the gas board had no earth wire, meaning a live current could have travelled through the gas pipes.

Ms Price said: “I’ve had to sort it out on my own – and I’m quite adequately able to do it – but I just used to go down to that office and I’d come out feeling like someone had bashed my head against a wall.

“My main problem now is that I should have a serial number attached to the outside somewhere and I haven’t – which means I might not even be able to sell it, so I feel a bit trapped.”

RoyaleLife, the UK’s largest provider of bungalow living to the over-45s, is the parent company of Royale Parks, which sold Ms Price her home and also facilitated the sale of her house to raise the funds.

Despite announcing plans to invest £10 million into its Reculver sites less than six months ago, Royale Parks has now been placed into administration.

It has left Ms Price, who believes she was overcharged tens of thousands of pounds, fearing she will have no recourse against the company.

I just want what I paid for,” said Ms Price.

“I came down here because I want an easy life. The advert was ‘come down here and have a nice retirement, everything’s going to be rosy’ – but now I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Neither RoyaleLife or Royale Parks responded to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for the administrator, James Cowper Kreston, said: “This complaint predates our appointment as administrators and as such we did not have prior knowledge of this particular situation.

“However, part of our duties as administrators is to investigate all actions of the directors and senior management.

“This complaint, having been brought to our attention, will form part of those investigations and so until we have been able to fully investigate the complaint it would be inappropriate for us to comment further.”