Water bill - HOW MUCH??? - is this normal?

cantbelieveit23

I think the point is that the OP believes that their use has not changed but the bills have increased unreasonably.
Has the volume of water used increased a lot or has the unit price increased?  Have you checked the meter readings yourself?  We have a very different experience.  Our monthly D/D is £21+, has hardly changed in 4 years, and generally keeps ahead of the actual bills.  To be fair, if we were at home for 12/12 months, our bill would probably be 50% more.  Aside from daily showers x 2, we take all REASONABLE precautions to save water, but are not picky about it.  We never use a hosepipe for any purpose.
Of course, there may be ways to reduce your water usage.  If you and partner are careful, are your teenagers on the same page?  However, the key question remains about the sudden increase and you need to get to the bottom of that.  The advice from others about checking for potential leaks is very relevant.  Your supplier ought to provide advice on that too. 

housebuyer143

badmemory said:

The water companies were told they could put up the prices by a certain amount over the next 5 years.  So they did all in the first year.  I am sure that the dividends will be good & that they will find another way of increasing the prices for the next 4 years.  ofwat not worth the papaer they are written on.

In Wales, the water company is not for profit, so I'm not sure what their excuse is for the huge increases. They pay their salaries and supposedly pump the rest of the profits into improvements. 

Hoenir

housebuyer143 said:

badmemory said:

The water companies were told they could put up the prices by a certain amount over the next 5 years.  So they did all in the first year.  I am sure that the dividends will be good & that they will find another way of increasing the prices for the next 4 years.  ofwat not worth the papaer they are written on.

In Wales, the water company is not for profit, so I'm not sure what their excuse is for the huge increases. They pay their salaries and supposedly pump the rest of the profits into improvements. 

Without the Victorians we wouldn't have the system that exists today. Like everything. Renewal is ultimately essential. 

jonybravo78

Late to the party, but this thread came up on a search I did on google. Our water bill for a family of 4 has gone from £50/ month to £212 a month. We are with UU North West. We are on a water meter. Surely this is ridiculous? It's really unaffordable considering energy companies are taking the !!!!!! (current bill is £300/month), council tax takes the !!!!!! (£220 / month). Just seems ridiculous

Robin9

jonybravo78 said:

Late to the party, but this thread came up on a search I did on google. Our water bill for a family of 4 has gone from £50/ month to £212 a month. We are with UU North West. We are on a water meter. Surely this is ridiculous? It's really unaffordable considering energy companies are taking the !!!!!! (current bill is £300/month), council tax takes the !!!!!! (£220 / month). Just seems ridiculous

Could you quote the readings from your meters for the last 2/3 years please

dunstonh

Late to the party, but this thread came up on a search I did on google. Our water bill for a family of 4 has gone from £50/ month to £212 a month. We are with UU North West. We are on a water meter. Surely this is ridiculous?

How is it ridiculous?

It's really unaffordable considering energy companies are taking the !!!!!! (current bill is £300/month), council tax takes the !!!!!! (£220 / month). Just seems ridiculous

£50pm for a family of 4 seems very low, assuming no arrears and the monetary amount matched the usage.     However, it is likely that you built up arrears as you were not paying enough and some of the increase is bringing you to where you should be plus catching up with arrears for underpaying plus the increase on top.

If you gave us your unit count/m3 use over multiple periods and indicated whether they were actual or estimates, then we could tell you if it's reasonable or not.

QrizB

jonybravo78 said:

Our water bill for a family of 4 has gone from £50/ month to £212 a month. We are with UU North West. We are on a water meter. Surely this is ridiculous?

If your bill is metered, and the meter readings are accurate, it suggests that yu're either using a huge amount of water or you've got a leak somewhere.

As requested above, what have your meter readings been on recent bills? How many litres a day?

dunstonh said:

£50pm for a family of 4 seems very low, assuming no arrears and the monetary amount matched the usage.

It's possible. We're paying about £55/mo for the four of us (not UU, though.)

Robin9

We use about 80 m3 pa and pay £42 a month  (Severn Trent)


OP you are using or leaking twice as much as us

dunstonh

It's possible. We're paying about £55/mo for the four of us (not UU, though.)

Our monthly d/d is £43pm for water, metered at 187 m3 per year (actual readings 93m3 and 94m3).  Just inward water, no water out.  Currently £8 in credit.

We keep getting bugged by E&SW for high-usage site checks, as we fall on their list of biggest users.    However, we have multiple field troughs on auto-fill plus half a dozen water buckets a day for the stables, plus a lot of cleaning and washing of the horses over the year.  Plus around 2000 litres a year for mixing and spraying fertiliser and herbicides.  So, that probably uses more than the humans in the house.  Although if I could switch my daughter for another horse, I swear the water usage would go down.

Water in has reduced from 237m3 in the year before.

Foolishly, I failed to submit a reading in the year before that for one 6-month period, and the estimate was way off the mark, resulting in the split that year being 13m3 (est) and 233m3. (act)  and the water company is lowering the d/d and then having to play catch-up with a large increase.    Not uncommon when estimates are used. 

jonybravo78

Thanks for all the replies, I spoke to UU yesterday for an explanation. They said that we were paying £50 a month for a year or so, and our DD hadn't factored in that UU had doubled their prices so the cost should have been £100 for the same usage.

Therefore we were in arrears, which is where the new bill of £214 had come from. Also they were estimating our usage for the last 8 months or so.

I asked how much we had left in arrears as we have been paying £214 for quite some time and they said we were now £10 in credit.

I submitted a meter reading on the call, and have woken up to the following.

- We are in credit by £151
- The usage since last August 2025 to present day has been calculated at 570L a day
- Our new DD is £145.50

So - good that we understand how the bill got so ridiculous. BUT - we are in credit and they still want to charge us £145.50 a month which I think is extortionate.