The petition of residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that park home owners pay the same tariffs as households in any other housing sector, however, as many sites are metered rather than individual park homes, they are frequently overcharged by park owners; further that park home owners are frequently paying for water wasted from delayed repairs to leakages in the site infrastructure and for water used by the park owners for their own purposes; further that residential park home owners are usually on fixed incomes and should not be paying for water they do not consume; further that they should enjoy the same benefits that individual water meters bring to mainstream housing and further that the collateral benefit will be that leakages are repaired more quickly by park owners and wastages of the resource minimised.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to require all water companies to provide each residential mobile home on a protected site with water meters and ensure that they fit meters for free on request (excepting Scotland).
And the petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Mrs Sheryll Murray, Official Report, 12 July 2022; Vol. 718, c. 302.]
[P002740]
Observations from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Trudy Harrison):
Thank you for sharing your petition with me as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. Thank you for outlining your views regarding water metering and billing for residents living in park homes.
While a majority of conventional homeowners are able to have individual water meters fitted to their properties, there are cases where a water meter might be shared by more than one property, such as for homes on shared pipework, as is the case with park homes. Where this is the case, it is not unusual for the water bill to be split equally between all dwellings.
Often in these cases, tenants or others—purchasers—buy their water or sewerage services from another person or company—a reseller—instead of directly from a water or sewerage company. This is known as water resale and applies to park homes. A guide to water resale is available from Ofwat and explains this further1.
Information about water resale charges can also be found on Ofwat’s website2. This outlines the approach water resellers must take to calculate water bills for the purchaser in accordance with the Water Resale Order 2006. A reseller should inform purchasers how they have calculated their bill. If no purchasers are metered, charges for water should not be higher than the average water bill for a region unless the reseller can justify this using one of the prescribed charging methods. If resellers charge more than the maximum resale price, their purchasers can take them to the small claims court to recover the money as well as interest.
Park home owners can request a water meter. However, resellers are under no obligation to install them. Additionally, if single homes are metered, this can result in higher administration fees for those being charged on a metered basis compared to being unmetered.
The Consumer Council for Water may be able to provide you with more information and support on water resale. The reseller can choose between these options when charging on an unmetered basis:
equally between the purchasers; or in proportion to the:
number of people living in each property;
rateable value of each property;
total floor space of each property;
number of bedrooms in each property; or
one half of the bill calculated on the number of purchasers (method 1) and the other half calculated on any one of the other methods (2-5).
As with park homes, conventional homes that are on a shared water supply share the responsibility to pay for and fix leaks. In our 2021 written ministerial statement on reducing demand for water, we committed to ask water companies to develop a consistent approach to address leakage on customers’ own pipes3. If purchasers have any concerns about leakage from pipes on their property or park site, their first point of contact should be their reseller to voice concerns. They may hold a licence for the park site, issued by the local council. If purchasers feel that concerns are not being addressed, this can be raised with their local council, which manages these licences4. Fixing onsite leaks will go some way to reducing total site metered water bill charges and those paid by park homes. Purchasers could also contact the water company supplying their area as they can ask that significant leaks are fixed by a reseller5.
The Government expect water companies to take action to reduce levels of leakage and have consistently challenged them on their performance. Ofwat’s current price review commits water companies to an average 16% leakage reduction by 2025. The industry has committed to a Government-endorsed target to reduce leakage by 50% sector-wide by 2050. Leakage on customer property forms part of the overall leakage targets and we have asked water companies to develop a consistent approach to addressing this.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact the Secretary of State about this issue.