does she have to pay this

nichart20

Hi this is on behalf of my friend she was private renting a property 2 years ago and a pipe burst on the outside tap. A bill has now turned up from the pipe bursting for over £1000.00 she has always been up to date and in front with water bill up to moving out paid fully up and now rents from council and was all up to date until this bill arrived. Should she be paying this does anyone know?

theartfullodger

See what it says in her original tenancy agreement (I can't read it from here..) but I would have thought the landlord should pay, the tight-fisted little rat that he is...

Cheers!

Artful (Landlord)

nichart20

I have let her know your advice

Thank you

Emmzi

do you mean a repair bill, or a water bill?

Paul_the_Painter

Check the dates on the bill, it could well relate to normal usage for the last 2 years! If the agents/LL/tenant were slack about informing the water company about dates that people moved in/out that could answer the question.

If it's a bill for repairing a water pipe, and it is from the Landlord - tell him that it is not your friends problem.

If it is a genuine bill from the water company for the right dates, when your friend was in the property, you may well have some argueing to do.

Things to consider
How long was the pipe leaking? - that is a lot of water! around 300cubic metres - that's 300 tonnes!

The water complany may reduce the bill as they didn't process it as waste.

Your water bill is made up of a cost for the water (around £1.00 per cubic metre) and the cost of disposing of the sewerage (around £2.00 per cubic metre) They can waive the cost of the sewerage disposal as there was no sewerage to dispose of.

300 cubic metres of water would fill up a 2 or 3 bedroom house!

If there was a delay in fixing the leak, did the tenant try and mitigate the loss - explain to LL that they could not turn off water supply for example?

G_M

As Paul says above.

She could only be liable if
1) it is for water usage
2) it is for usage during the period she was a tenant there

If there was a leak, as tenant she had a duty of care and should have been aware that water was leaking (the LL could hardly be expected to know unless told), and should have taken action ie inform the LL, call the water company, turn off the water mains etc.

nearlynew

Tell them to f*ck off

nichart20

It's a water bill for yorkshire water, she had been at work 4 hours and realised on return from work so it could have been leaking for up to that time, it was then 4 hours before the landlord sent someone to fix it. She does not have a copy of tennancy agreement though if she does have to pay it I hope they reduce the bill by a huge chunk.

G_M

This does not make sense.

I would have thought it would be impossible to run up a £1000 water bill in 4 (or even 8) hours.The pipes are simply not big enough, nor the pressure strong enough, for that much water to escape down a residential mains in a few hours.

As for the LL sending someone round in 4 hours, that seems a pretty fast response time to me though I assume she had already turned off the water mains when she first discovered the leak on her return from work....

It also seems strange that "she has always been up to date and in front with water bill up to moving out paid fully up". If that is so, how can this bill appear? Either she settled her water bill when she moved out or she didn't.

Paul_the_Painter

1. Check the dates on the bill - are they asking for money from AFTER she moved out?

2. No way you can use £1000 of water in 8 hours - if she had, there would have been SIGNIFICANT damage around the property 300 TONNES!!!!

3. When were meters read? she could have been paying estimated bills for quite a while.

My gut feeling is that when she moved out, the new tenant didn't let the water company know that they had moved in. Therefore a large chunk of this bill relates to time she wasn't responsable for the bill.

Worth a check