Thames Water bills - or lack of

nasenbaer31

I moved into a new build in 2014, contacted Thames Water to let them know and then - nothing. I assumed my partner was sorting out the water bills (we share responsibility for them), she thought I was and basically for almost eight years we've had no water bill sent through. 
Now I'm not suggesting we don't pay but I am interested to know if a) we have any recourse to TW 'writing off' some of the bill due to its inability to add us to their customer base for so long and / or b) if the responsibility lay purely with us is it reasonable for us to agree a repayment scheme with them given the bill would be in the thousands.
Thanks!

QrizB

Welcome to the forum.

If it's a 2014 new-build you will have a water meter. If you read it you'll know how much water you've used and can calculate what the bill will be if you're asked to catch up.

Do you have as record of contacting Thames Water in 2014? did they reply at all?

nasenbaer31

@QrizB thanks for the reply - bizarrely we don't have a water meter, there's never been one installed  - and we'd filled an online form in and got an email from TW confirming we'd submitted a request but that's all, nothing since.

Sandtree

What sort of property is it? Is it leasehold or freehold? Do you pay any service charges to anyone even if freehold?

When renting a few new/nearly new builds we were told by the landlord that we would be responsible for paying the all the utilities including water however on contacting the water company they couldn't set things up. After some chasing etc it turned out all the buildings were on a single meter being paid by the freeholder and recharged through the service charge.

In fact our current flat we just received a massive rebate which clearly goes back way before we took over the lease but that was out benefit.

Grumpy_chap

nasenbaer31 said:

I moved into a new build in 2014, contacted Thames Water to let them know and then - nothing. I assumed my partner was sorting out the water bills (we share responsibility for them), she thought I was and basically for almost eight years we've had no water bill sent through. 
Now I'm not suggesting we don't pay but I am interested to know if a) we have any recourse to TW 'writing off' some of the bill due to its inability to add us to their customer base for so long and / or b) if the responsibility lay purely with us is it reasonable for us to agree a repayment scheme with them given the bill would be in the thousands.
Thanks!

Is it a new build just one or two properties, or a new build big estate?  It is possible that if it is a big estate, the water supplier might not be TW but an independent provider, known as a NAV, which is a separate company that owns the local network within the development.
https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/regulated-companies/markets/nav-market/

It won't help the OP in so far as there will still be a large back-bill to be paid, but it may help the OP if they establish it is not Thames Water.