Water Bills questions and comment

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

£400 to £500 pa - bit less if you spend summer/xmas breaks getting your parents to pay!

Bit more if you have long hair and are anything like my daughters!

bealski93

Cardew wrote: »

Welcome to the forum.

£400 to £500 pa - bit less if you spend summer/xmas breaks getting your parents to pay!

Bit more if you have long hair and are anything like my daughters!

Thank you! We all do have long hair so I'll assume more than that, thank you for the advice

pedigreechump6

Hi everyone, although I've never posted here before, I've been reading the forum for years so thanks for all the help generously provided before.

Now, on to the matter at hand and I really don't want to go over the same points made previously but rateable values and the absurd bills they can produce need to be addressed by government.

I rent and have done ever since I moved out of my parents house several years ago but it's only in my latest flat that I have a water meter installed...and the savings are incredible.

For the past 4 years I have lived alone in 3 different properties. I have used roughly the same amount of water during this time and yet the bills have been hugely different:

Flat 1: rateable value of 826 meant annual bills of £759

Flat 2: initially rateable value of 290 which meant annual bills of £379 but then, after finding my flat couldn't get a meter, I was put on the Assessed Household Charge for a one bed flat of £270

Flat 3: I've only been living here a little while so can't get annual figure yet but based on the bill received for the first 44 days, it will be £100 (although I would consider myself to be very efficient with water)

So between the most expensive and the cheapest, my annual saving is likely to be around £659. My main points of argument are:

Point 1: rateable values are beyond a joke (we all know that) so how can it still be justifiable to charge based on them?

Point 2: even when I was finally put on an Assessed Household Charge in Flat 2, it seems to me to still be far higher than it should be.

Point 3: if Thames Water (my provider) has an Assessed Household Charge for a property with 5 or more bedrooms of just £375 which is meant to be a guide to how much a household of this size will use, how can they rightly justify unmetered bills higher than this for a 1 or 2 bedroom property?

Point 4: if all properties in the country have a known number of bedrooms (which they do as far as I know) and water companies have Assessed Household Charges that reflect their estimates of usage for different sized properties, why can't they charge all unmetered properties this same charge regardless whether or not they have requested a water meter? This would do away with rateable values.

Point 5: for anyone arguing against mandatory metering because it will push their bills up - so what? Are you saying, per cubic metre of water used, that I should pay more and you should pay less because I live alone and you have a family? Is that how energy bills work? No, you pay for what you use - that is the only truly fair way for it to work.

I'm no expert on this so I do have a few questions (aside from those asked in the points above):

Question 1: I read somewhere that Ofwat agree how much profit water companies can make so that they remain able to provide a suitable level of service and pay for investment etc. Is this true?

Question 2: if the above is true and the profits are pretty much set by the regulator, was £1.7 billion over 5 years, of which £1.4 billion was paid out in dividends, a fair amount for Thames Water to make?

Question 3: is there anyone in government who has this issue on their radar or are they either ignorant or focusing primarily on energy?

Ok, that's the rant over from me. I look forward to reading your responses.

renegade

How is a water calculated for a new tenant in a rented property?

Cupcake26

Hi
We moved house in June and when we changed our address with our water company (it remained the same one) they sent a revised plan calculating what our new monthly direct debit would be. We are not on a water metre we just pay a flat rate. The new rate given to us is considerably more expensive (more than double) than what we were paying before and wondered why this was. I know you only pay the bills so many months of the year so have they compressed the payments? Our direct debit started in August. Just seems a huge leap compared to what we were paying before, especially as its with the same company so we were already paying up until June at our old house.

Cardew

Cupcake26 wrote: »

Hi
We moved house in June and when we changed our address with our water company (it remained the same one) they sent a revised plan calculating what our new monthly direct debit would be. We are not on a water metre we just pay a flat rate. The new rate given to us is considerably more expensive (more than double) than what we were paying before and wondered why this was. I know you only pay the bills so many months of the year so have they compressed the payments? Our direct debit started in August. Just seems a huge leap compared to what we were paying before, especially as its with the same company so we were already paying up until June at our old house.

Welcome to the forum.

If you are not metered your water charges are based on your property's Rateable Value(RV).

RV is given as £xxx and you will pay yyy pence per £1 of RV.

So the higher the RV the higher your bills.

Your bill will state the RV.

Without going into the dim and distant past, the RV value on a house is nothing to do with its value, Council tax banding or size.

Cupcake26

Thank you Cardew, I will check my bill.

Lucyfr

Hi all,

I have had some trouble with United Utilities charging me for someone else's usage (flatblock, all metered) as they couldn't marry the pipes with the meters. They fiddled my bill which was terrible and when confronted said they had sorted it all and I was on the right meter. I live alone and am not a heavy water user, say average 4 showers a week, 2 washing loads and minimal washing use. I am being charged £237 a year... Is that about right?! Have always house shared on standard charges so have no idea and don't trust United Utilities!

Thanks in advance for any help!

Cardew

Lucyfr wrote: »

Hi all,

I have had some trouble with United Utilities charging me for someone else's usage (flatblock, all metered) as they couldn't marry the pipes with the meters. They fiddled my bill which was terrible and when confronted said they had sorted it all and I was on the right meter. I live alone and am not a heavy water user, say average 4 showers a week, 2 washing loads and minimal washing use. I am being charged £237 a year... Is that about right?! Have always house shared on standard charges so have no idea and don't trust United Utilities!

Thanks in advance for any help!

With United Utilities - see http://www.unitedutilities.com/Our-charges-2013-2014.aspx the standing charges are £110 pa*.

Combined water and sewerage costs £2.85 a cubic metre.

The average consumption in UK is approx. 55 cubic metres per person, per year. So that would cost £157.

Thus a total of £267 would be average for a single occupant.

Toilets, washing machines and dishwashers are also big consumers of water.

* you may be entitled to a £39 pa discount - see link.

Lucyfr

Hi Cardew,

Thanks so much! I actually used my metered yearly total on their water usage calculator out of curiosity and it advised me to not get a meter as I was paying £25 too much with one...! Annoys me that a previous tenant can get one installed to save water with a family of 4 and it costs me more to have one!

Thanks for your help!