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Park Homes

I will certainly undertake to write to my hon. Friend and other Members when I have had the opportunity to discuss the matter with my colleagues in DECC. Members will be aware that the Energy Act 2011 has now passed into law and the green deal is due to start next autumn. Some of the necessary statutory instruments to support that are currently under consideration. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government will be publishing the consultation early in the new year. I hope that it will provide a timetable and framework for the debate. Following that, we will bring forward the necessary legislative measures at the earliest opportunity. On the calls for a fit and proper test for site owners, the Government are not convinced that the protection of park home residents requires a complex and costly national licensing system. We have to strike a careful balance that protects the vulnerable and targets the worst in the most effective way. That is what our consultation seeks to achieve, and I look forward to Members' responses when that consultation is published. We have already begun the process of enabling residents to enforce their rights and to challenge unreasonable behaviour through the residential property tribunal. Since it started dealing with park home issues in May, it has received 31 applications up to the end of October and it has determined 13 of them. Not everyone will be satisfied with the outcomes of those cases, because in judicial proceedings there will always be a winner and a loser. However, the number of applications shows that residents have been empowered to challenge unreasonableness on the part of site owners, something that few were prepared to do previously through the regular courts. I am certainly not suggesting that the residential property tribunal is the solution to all the disputes, but it is a first positive step, and, I hope, an earnest of our good intentions. Several Members have raised service charges for gas, electricity, water and sewage. It is important to put on the record that existing rules already strongly limit the powers of site owners to impose unreasonable charges. They are not allowed to charge an illegal rate of VAT or to control the service supply. I want to make it clear that if site owners provide services, they will be entitled to recover the cost from residents under the agreement. Sometimes that cost will be recoverable only through the pitch fee. In that case, any charges will be limited to the retail prices index at the next rent review, regardless of the actual charges that the site owner has incurred. For that reason, pitch agreements will often contain a provision permitting the site owner to levy a separate charge for the provision of services. It is important for Members to be aware that the charges are governed by orders made by Ofwat and Ofgem respectively. Under the rules, a site owner cannot charge residents more than the cost he incurs in purchasing water, electricity or gas from the supplier. In some cases, the site owner can charge a reasonable administration charge. How that recharge is calculated and apportioned between the homes has to be fair and transparent, and residents are entitled to see the bills on which the recharge is based. It is also important to be aware that the site owner can recharge only for the supply to the home and the pitch and cannot include any amount relating to his own supply—for instance, for street lighting or heating of offices or communal buildings. VAT is payable by the home owner at the 5% domestic rate for electricity and gas, not the 20% business rate, even if the supply to the site owner is commercially rated. Water, of course, is zero-rated. If a resident believes that they have been overcharged for the resale of the services, they can recover the charges in the small claims court. Administration charges on top of the actual cost of energy are also strictly limited. In the case of water, administration charges cannot exceed 1.5p per day for non-metered supplies and 2.5p per day for a metered supply. That effectively means that £5 or £10 per year is the maximum administration charge. I hope that all those measures give some comfort to Members that home owners have some protection. Our next step following the consultation will be to bring forward, when parliamentary time allows, the legislative measures needed to tackle the abuses that have been so eloquently set out today.