Water

Zena_Barton

I received a rebate for not using the public sewer for wastewater.

I have lived at my current address for over ten years and obviously this is not something that has only happened in April 2011, indeed it has been the same for all those years. I would therefore like to know the following information:

As this has happened all over the country where we have been charged for wastewater although it is taken away by a soakaway, what steps can we all take to get out money back for the years at least since privatisation, if not before.


I believe that this could be as large as the PPI scandal with all the refunds that have been paid out. What should we do????

Cardew

This has come up countless times in this forum if you do a search. The latest was in https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3453821

This is what I wrote:

Welcome to the forum.

This has been covered many many times - search in this section for surface water drainage.(SWD)

The policy adopted by Anglian is the same with all water companies and has been approved by the Regulator OFWAT.

If you go to the OFWAT website they explain why firms should not backdate before the start of the billing year - and the reasons are valid.

It is quite complicated but the 'simple' version is:

Water firm's revenue(and thus profit) is fixed by OFWAT. It doesn't matter a bit to a water company if their customers pay for SWD or not. If they get, say, £1million less revenue from SWD they raise an extra £1million in increased water and sewerage charges.

If you and a lot of other customers got refunded back for several years, that money would have to be raised by an extra charge for water on this year's charges, so people who were not even customers of Anglian until recently would be paying towards your refund for a period 8 years ago.

Unfortunately it was the Government(of Maggie) that stipulated in the Water Privatisation Act that the default position would be that everyone would pay SWD.

Please don't think I agree with the system - frankly the whole issue of SWD is a disgrace and there should be no such charge.

Anyway lots of people have tried to get their SWD charges backdated and failed; albeit there was one poster with Thames who said he did get it backdated a couple of years.

Good luck if you pursue the claim - let us know.

BekahC

The wastewater companies stance (or the one the company i work for bills along side) is they do not know if you have soakaways etc it is your responsibility to let them know.,