legal standpoint on billing neighbours for shared water

Jawalk

Hi,
Hoping someone can help. We recently bought an old farmhouse to which we have a mains water supply to and are billed by the water board. The supply is shared between 3 other properties which are all fitted with water meters. In our deeds we have a right to supply water to them. We do not get billed for waste etc as we have a septic tank. 2 neighbours we have no issue with and are readily asking if they need to settle up. One has not. We have had the property for approx 10 months and we know he is a bad debtor. As we are not in the property and are doing it up and relations are already poor we have not yet asked for any money but we have asked for several meter readings so we can work out their usage. We will need to ask them soon and I wonder how best to go about this. Should we invoice them with a deadline? Should we get it signed that they have received it? Can we legally state that if they miss the deadline they will be charged interest on a daily rate? How many reminders do we need to give them before we threaten to turn their supply off. Our solicitor did say that even though they have a right to water it is not a free right!
Any one who actually knows or has experience? We don’t expect the bill to be much possibly£80 so it’s not like we are giving them a whopping £300 bill to pay by the end of the week. However we are not prepared to pay for their water usage for the foreseeable future £80 mounts up over the years!

matelodave

I'm guessing that if you have already spoken to your solicitor about it then he would be the best person to advise and to possibly send the first bill, so the owner is in no doubt that you will be doing the same in the future.

Random guessing and well meaning posts (even those that include cutting off his supply or breaking his legs etc) may not help you as much as your solicitor

wavelets

Jawalk wrote: »

Hi,
Hoping someone can help. We recently bought an old farmhouse to which we have a mains water supply to and are billed by the water board. The supply is shared between 3 other properties which are all fitted with water meters. In our deeds we have a right to supply water to them. We do not get billed for waste etc as we have a septic tank. 2 neighbours we have no issue with and are readily asking if they need to settle up. One has not. We have had the property for approx 10 months and we know he is a bad debtor. As we are not in the property and are doing it up and relations are already poor we have not yet asked for any money but we have asked for several meter readings so we can work out their usage. We will need to ask them soon and I wonder how best to go about this. Should we invoice them with a deadline? Should we get it signed that they have received it? Can we legally state that if they miss the deadline they will be charged interest on a daily rate? How many reminders do we need to give them before we threaten to turn their supply off. Our solicitor did say that even though they have a right to water it is not a free right!
Any one who actually knows or has experience? We don’t expect the bill to be much possibly£80 so it’s not like we are giving them a whopping £300 bill to pay by the end of the week. However we are not prepared to pay for their water usage for the foreseeable future £80 mounts up over the years!

What did your solicitor tell you before you agreed to buy the property about the water supply?

Hopefully it was explained to you that you, and you alone as the account holder, would be full responsible to the water supplier for paying the bill

And you presumably agreed to purchase the property on that basis.

You can invoice who you like, for what you like (as people prove to me daily every time I open up my emails) ... but unless the other party have entered into a contract with you, they'd be a fool to pay it.
Also, if you are in the UK, and you are invoicing others, it sounds like you are in business and HMRC would be very interested in that.;)
(At least the emailers who invoice me have the sense to be in Katmandu or some other far off location )