Query water bill amount

skintagain2010

Hi all, can anyone please advise me. My mum lives in Hawkwell in Essex and pays 2 water companies (on one bill). One company Anglian are charging her £442.91 which I believe is for sewage. The other is called Essex and something and is £357.52 per annum. This makes I think £780.43 per annum. She pays £78 a month over 10 mths. I live in Portsmouth and pay a lot lot less. Neither of us has a meter. When I googled it said average water bill is around £40 a mth. Can anyone please advise if it’s possible that she is paying too much? Thank you 

p00hsticks

As she's not on a meter, the cost will depend on the rateable value of the property, which should be shown on the bill. What is it for her and how does it compare with yours ?

Perhaps look into if she can get a water meter fitted and whether it would save money. 

skintagain2010

Hi Poohsticks, thanks for replying. She is band D - 2 bed bungalow and we are band C - 3 bed terraced house. I do understand that it is to do with the rates value but just thought £78 a mth is massive difference to our £38 a mth in Portsmouth. She is going to look into a water meter this week but I thought I would check here as to if the amount seemed to be correct or whether she should question it. 

Seems terrible to me that 4 of us are paying such a lot less than 2 OAP’s on pensions - I didn’t realise that bills could be so far apart. 

p00hsticks

It's not the council tax band, it's the rateable value (which was used before council tax banding was introduced). It should show it on your water bill.

If you don't have a meter, then it's immaterial how many people are in the house or how much water you are actually using. 

wobbly588

Go onto the Essex & Suffolk Water website and search for information on installing a meter.  Whilst you cannot compare the prices between different parts of the country you can certainly see if paying for what you use is less than a set value on rateable value that was frozen back in 1990.

Brie

Different area but we pay about £30 a month in total with 2 people living in a bungalow with a large garden.  I'd always been told that a single individual in a home without a meter would be paying well over the odds.

marcia_

That is ridiculous. I only pay 1 company united utilities. My bill is £25 month 

skintagain2010

I am normally on the ball with saving money etc and feel like I have not been with this one as assumed wrongly that everyone paid roughly the same amount - obviously not! My mum will ring to try and get a metre put in. Thanks for the advice, horrible that there are probably many others in the same situation that are over paying 🙁. 

es5595

So, water in Portsmouth is incredible cheap, something to do with the water table and something else, so you can’t compare. 

However, I’m also in Essex and we currently have three adults and a toddler using an average amount of water and the monthly direct debit for both is about to be £47 a month, so £564 annually. 

Just to avoid further confusion, Essex and Suffolk water are about to take over the billing of water and sewage so their bill from August should cover both. 

That said, it will be significantly cheaper for them to go onto a water meter rather than using the rateable value. You may find they’ve already got one installed, but if it was done in the early days they could choose not to use it, and there was a lot of scaremongering about them!