Ad disclosure: this site contains affiliate links, marked (Ad). If you enquire or book through one, we earn a commission from the operator, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what our guides say.
Lodge LedgerUK ownership, honestly costed

Costs

Gas, electric and water on a holiday park, how billing actually works

Three utilities, three different rulebooks. Mains electricity and piped gas are capped at what your park paid. Bottled gas is not capped at all. And the water resale rules that protect residential park home owners specifically exclude holiday homes.

Published 2026-08-04 · updated 2026-08-04 · 10 min read · all figures sourced below

Your park buys gas, electricity and water in bulk and sells them on to you, and three different rulebooks govern what it may charge. Mains electricity and piped gas are capped at exactly what the park paid, holiday accommodation included. Bottled gas is not capped at all, and Ofwat's water resale rules exclude holiday homes by name.

Most owners assume one protection covers all three utilities. It does not, and the gaps are where the money goes.

Can a holiday park make a profit on your electricity?

No. The park may charge you the same unit price it pays its own supplier, and nothing more.

The rule is a direction issued by Ofgem on 14 March 2014 under section 37 of the Gas Act 1986 and section 44 of the Electricity Act 1989. It came into force on 11 April 2014. Paragraph 1 says a maximum resale price applies where gas or electricity supplied by an authorised supplier "is resold by any person for domestic use, or for use in any form of accommodation (including that used for holidays)". Holiday parks are covered by that wording, not by inference from it.

Paragraph 3 sets the price. Where you have a meter, the maximum price for each unit "shall be the same as that paid to the authorised supplier by the person reselling it". Paragraph 4 deals with the standing charge: it must be shared "pro rata with the amounts payable for units of gas or electricity", and if the park itself uses part of the same supply or runs common services off it, the park must take its own share of that standing charge alongside you.

If there is no meter, paragraph 5 requires the park to estimate your fair proportion of what it paid, excluding a fair proportion of anything consumed in common parts. Paragraph 6 makes that estimate self-correcting. Over any period up to a year, the park must not recover more than it spent, and if it over-recovers from you by more than £5 a year, pro rata for shorter periods, it must use reasonable endeavours to repay the excess.

Ofgem's older leaflet, "The resale of gas and electricity, guidance for resellers", effective 1 January 2003 and still hosted on Ofgem's site, spells out what the park cannot bury in your unit rate. The reseller "is not entitled to recover the costs of running his or her own electricity or gas system through the charges which are made for gas and electricity". Nor can it charge you for energy used in "a clubhouse, laundry room or shower block on a caravan park". Those are service charges, recoverable separately if you have agreed to them, and outside the resale cap entirely.

The leaflet describes the 2002 direction rather than the 2014 one, so treat the direction as the operative text and the leaflet as commentary. Ofgem published a call for input on the maximum resale price on 9 October 2025, which closed on 5 December 2025. That page carries no outcome as of 4 August 2026, so the 2014 direction stands.

One thing the cap does not do is make your electricity cheap. It fixes your price to the park's price. A park buys on a commercial contract, and if that contract is dearer than the domestic market, you pay the dearer rate perfectly lawfully. For scale, Ofgem's price cap for 1 July to 30 September 2026 is 26.11p per kWh for electricity plus a 57.19p daily standing charge, and 7.33p per kWh for gas plus 29.04p a day, on direct debit and including VAT. The typical annual bill on those rates is £1,862. Your park is not obliged to match any of it. It is only obliged not to mark up.

Does the maximum resale price apply to bottled gas?

No. Ofgem's guidance is explicit: "Maximum resale price also does not apply to the resale of liquified petroleum gas (LPG), either in cylinders or through bulk tank systems."

The mechanism is in the wording of the direction. It bites on gas "supplied by any authorised supplier", meaning a licensed supplier feeding the network. Bottled propane is not, so it falls outside. On a park with piped mains gas your gas is capped. On a park with 47kg propane bottles behind the caravan it is not, and the park can charge what it likes.

Calor's published online prices give the shape of the market. A 13kg propane refill is £45.50, a 6kg refill £32.00 and a 5kg patio refill £23.25, all including VAT, with a higher first-purchase price covering the Cylinder Refill Agreement. Calor also notes that "a temporary volatility surcharge currently applies to all LPG bottle purchases".

The one figure holiday home owners actually need, the price of a 47kg propane cylinder, is not published. Calor's page tells you to "get in touch with us or your local stockist". Calor gives no date for when its listed prices were set. So there is no published benchmark to hold your park's bottle price against. Do not assume you are being overcharged, and do not assume you are not.

Do the water resale rules protect a holiday lodge owner?

No, not in England and Wales. Ofwat's guide to water resale lists the exclusions plainly: "The maximum resale price does not apply to: holiday homes; second homes; commercial customers; private supplies, such as water from a borehole; cesspits and septic tanks; or maintenance charges."

The exclusion is built into the Water Resale Order 2006 itself, which took effect on 31 March 2006 under section 150 of the Water Industry Act 1991 and revoked the 2001 Order. Paragraph 5 defines a Dwelling by reference to Schedule 4A of the Act, and only where it is "occupied by a person as his only or principal home". That list includes a caravan within the meaning of Part I of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960. A Purchaser, the person the Order protects, is "a person who occupies any dwelling". A holiday caravan is not your only or principal home, so you are not a Purchaser and the cap does not reach you.

The numbers matter anyway, because a residential park home neighbour on a mixed site does get them. Where the supply is metered, the reseller may charge the volumetric rate it pays, capped at the water company's standard domestic volumetric tariff, plus the standing charge divided by the number of purchasers. The administration fee is capped at 2.5p per day for a metered purchaser and 1.5p per day for an unmetered one, which Ofwat's guide rounds to "around £5 each year for those without a meter and £10 for those with a meter". Over a 365 day year that is £9.13 for a metered purchaser and £5.48 for an unmetered one. If a purchaser asks in writing and gets no answer within four weeks, the recoverable charge drops to half the local company's average household bill until the information arrives. Overcharging is recoverable with simple interest at twice the Bank of England average base rate.

None of that is yours by right. On a holiday pitch, your water charge is whatever your pitch agreement says it is, and the only levers you have are contract terms and general consumer law. Ofwat's Order applies in England and Wales. Scotland has a separate regime that this article has not checked.

What VAT rate should be on your park electricity bill?

Five per cent. HMRC's VAT Notice 701/19 lists both "caravans" and "self catering holiday accommodation" among the residential premises whose fuel and power qualifies for the reduced rate, and GOV.UK's rates page confirms that electricity for domestic and residential use is charged at 5 per cent. Hotels are excluded from that list, holiday caravans are not.

There is also a de minimis rule that works regardless of building type. Electricity supplied at no more than 33 kWh a day, or 1,000 kWh a month, is reduced rated, as is gas at no more than 145 kWh a day or 4,397 kWh a month. HMRC says supplies within those limits "should be taxed at the reduced rate" and that no certificate is needed.

Ofgem's 2003 leaflet goes further, saying that whatever VAT rate the park pays its own supplier, "he or she may only include the lower rate (currently 5 per cent) in the charges made to the purchaser", and that a park liable for Climate Change Levy cannot pass it to purchasers paying the lower rate. Ofgem hedges that as its understanding and refers readers to HMRC. Treat it as a reason to query a 20 per cent line on your electricity bill, not as a ruling.

What do the big operators actually publish?

Almost nothing per unit. Not one operator checked for this article publishes a pence per kWh figure, a cubic metre rate or a bottled gas price.

Haven publishes annual averages instead. Its site fees page gives "Average gas and electricity £426" and "Average rates including water £324", both stated as costs at Golden Sands in Lincolnshire in January 2026, against annual site fees of £4,770 to £10,000 and above. The same page contradicts itself twice. Its frequently asked questions section puts site fees starting from £4,645 while the cost table starts them at £4,770, and it says water charges "vary by park but in 2024 these were between £330 to £600 per year", which is more for water alone in 2024 than the £324 the table gives for rates and water combined in 2026.

Shorefield says only that "electricity and gas is all metered", quotes site fees from £5,422 a year for a 12ft static at Forest Edge, and puts water inside a separate rates bill that also covers refuse collection and wastage. Lovat Parks is the most useful on process without giving a single rate: gas and electricity billed quarterly and payable within 14 days, non-domestic rates and water charges billed annually in March, and site fees notified in November and payable by 31 January. John Fowler's published park rules for caravan and lodge holiday homes say nothing about billing at all, only that all gas, electricity and water connections must be switched off in the closed season.

How do you check a park utility bill?

Ask in writing, because the direction gives you a right and a penalty behind it.

Paragraph 7 requires the park, on request from an owner or a prospective owner, to tell you the price it pays under its own supply contract and "on request furnish that person with documentary evidence in support of this information". Where the bill is estimated rather than metered, it must also explain the estimation method. Paragraph 8 has teeth: if the park fails to answer in a timely fashion, the maximum resale price and your share of the standing charge are reduced by twice the Barclays base rate that applied on the date you asked, for as long as it fails to answer. Paragraph 9 adds interest at twice the average Barclays base rate on any overcharge.

Confirm the unit rate on your bill matches the rate on the park's own supply contract. Confirm the standing charge is split pro rata to units used and that the park has taken its own share. Confirm no clubhouse, pool or shower block energy sits inside your unit rate. Confirm the VAT line reads 5 per cent. For water, ask which basis the park uses and get it in writing, since you have no statutory cap to fall back on. For bottled gas, ask the price of a 47kg cylinder and whether the pitch agreement obliges you to buy from the park, because that is the one utility where nothing restrains the price.

None of these sit inside the site fee. If you are working out what a pitch really costs, our guide to what a site fee is actually paying for covers the boundary, why site fees rise and what rights you have covers the annual increase, and the ownership cost calculator lets you model utilities as a separate line rather than folding them into the headline figure.

Sources