Written by Harry Turnbull
A Cheshire MP is demanding that Ofgem crack down on inflated electricity bills at park‑home sites after uncovering evidence that one of the UK’s largest operators is using a questionable billing method.
Sarah Pochin, MP for Runcorn and Helsby, says Wyldecrest Parks — the sector’s biggest operator — is applying rules designed for holiday parks and marinas rather than domestic customers. The result, she says, is that residents are being charged up to 23% more than they should be.
Pochin has written formally to Ofgem asking why a methodology intended for unmetered sites is being applied to fully metered residential homes, and whether the regulator will clarify the rules as part of its current review of Maximum Resale Price (MRP) guidance. In her letter, she warns that Wyldecrest’s approach “appears to depart from Ofgem’s published guidance”.
Under Ofgem’s resale rules, park‑home operators who receive a single bulk electricity bill must pass on charges to residents using the supplier’s actual unit rate where individual homes have their own meters. But Wyldecrest is instead bundling all usage and fixed charges together, then dividing the total across residents to create a single blended rate. The sort of practice that is allowed on sites that don’t have individual meter readings.
As a result, residents are being charged around 39p per kWh, despite the site’s supplier, Shell Energy, billing Wyldecrest at 27.7p per kWh. For an average user consuming 500 kWh per quarter, that means a bill of £195 instead of £158. The invented tariff appears nowhere on the supplier’s bill.
The issue came to light when Graham Robinson, a resident at Orchard Park in Elton, noticed his electricity bill “didn’t add up”.
“I knew the supplier was charging much less than 39p,” he said. “When I looked into it, I found Wyldecrest was literally making up its own unit price by fiddling the figures.”
Wyldecrest’s Head of Legal and Compliance has confirmed in writing that the method is company policy across all its parks and claims it meets Ofgem rules..
One of the problems appears to be ambiguity in those rules — and Ofgem’s own understanding of them. The regulator says landlords are ‘free to create their own charging methodology’ but then failed to respond when asked about the distinction between unmetered and metered consumers.In fact the MRP rules are quite straightforward:
Metered sites: must use the supplier’s actual unit rate and divide fixed charges pro‑rata among residents.
Unmetered or estimated sites: may use flexible methods to estimate bills — the only context in which “no hard and fast rules” applies.
The park‑homes sector has been described by several MPs in recent parliamentary debates as “the wild west”, with calls for urgent reform to protect residents from opaque and inconsistent charging practices.
