Confused.com!!

tara442

Hi there,
I am on a water meter and I am now paying £13 a month for water..which I am happy about. I am still paying £25 a month for sewerage though??? surely not right? Can anyone explain it to me please?
Should have said -- South East and Southern Water.
Many thanks

matelodave

Look at your tariff info for both water & sewerage. Read your meter and work it out - are your bills based on actual consumption or estimates. The water supply company reads the meter and then give the reading to the sewerage company.
Check your bills carefully to see what you are paying for and how much it costs

Quite often sewerage is more expensive that the water supply, probably because sewerage costs more to treat and there's a lot more maintenance required to keep the drains clear
You are also probably paying for the stuff that runs off your roof and off your drive unless you can prove that it doesn't go into the drainage system.

Candy53

I should think it will be more expensive. We're unmetered, and if it wasn't for our discount for surface water, our sewerage bill would have been quite a bit more than the water.



Candy

Methusela

If you look at the website for South East Water you'll find that they charge £1.20 for each cubic metre of water used, plus a standing charge of £27 per year. Your water bill is £13 per month so you are using 107 cubic metres a year, giving a basic cost of (107 x £1.20) = £128 a year. Adding the £27 standing charge brings your annual water cost to £155, ie. around £13 per month.

But the charge you call "sewerage" is actually made up of three different amounts:

First there is a volume charge for sewerage at £2.27 per cubic metre, based on the notion that almost all the water which comes into your house goes out again down the drain. So your 107 cu.metre usage adds £243 per year, plus another standing charge of £21 per year, totalling £264 for the year's sewerage, or £22 per month.

Second, to add insult to injury, you then have to pay a standing charge of £23 per year for South East Water to take away the rainwater that falls on your property which then runs through your drains into the main sewer. You can actually avoid this by installing a soakaway and diverting all your rainwater to run into it but few people do this because of the high installation cost.

Thirdly, you pay a standing charge of £12 to cover South East Water taking away through their sewer all of the rainwater which falls onto the highway outside your house, to avoid your property being flooded every time it rains hard. (If you've ever been to Cyprus or other less developed countries, where they don't have road drains in many major towns you would realise that a main road can quickly become a major river in a heavy rainstorm, when there is nowhere for the water to go). These standing charges for rainwater are added to your sewerage charge to bring you up to the £25 per month you mention.

You may feel it is unfair to charge you for taking this water away, because it is anyone's guess what would happen to their sewers if they didn't have this rainwater to help flush out the sewers. But since when were energy and water bills based on the concept of fairness?

One final point from the South East Water website is that it seems you might be entitled to a discount if you are the sole occupier of your property. If you are, then get in touch with them.