Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what representations she has received on park home owners being able to be individually metered for water use.

We have not received any recent representation from park home owners on this topic.

The majority of premises either receive their water and sewerage services from a water company or a reseller. A customer of a water company can request (under the Water Industry Act 1991) a water meter and if it is not feasible to fit one (due to it being impractical or unduly costly) they will be moved across to an assessed charge. The assessed charge should ‘bear as much relation as possible to the volumes of water such customers would be likely to use’ and are normally based on the average metered bill for the area or the number of bedrooms.

Those customers of resellers (and this can include sheltered accommodation, housing association properties, flats above commercial premises, caravan parks and park homes) can ask for a meter to be fitted but there is no legal requirement on the reseller to do this.

The industry regulator, Ofwat, regulates the resale market through The Water Resale Order 2006 (section 150 of the Water Industry Act 1991) and provides examples on how the charges should be apportioned.