Help! Water bill increased to £117

rainbow_fountains

We bought our 30 year old house nearly 5 years ago, water company is southern water. 3 bed house, 2 adults and a toddler.

there is an ancient water meter in a hole in the ground out front, it doesn’t appear to be visibly turning, and no obvious leak that I can spot.

I can only view the last 2 years of water bills online, but in 2023 our bill was £26pcm (same figure everything month). Then in 2024 this rose to £59pcm (baby born this year so not surprised by the rise). But in 2025 it increased again to £117pcm which we’ve been paying for 4 months now. While our water usage is still high with the baby, it hasn’t increased THAT much.

Upon investigating our online account it seems our bill should be approximately £75pcm, and the higher increase for both this year and last year is mostly due to backdated bills when we were being undercharged previous years?

we’ve had no communication from Southern water to say we were in arrears, they’ve just increased our direct debit to such a high amount it looks like we have a major leak.

what I can’t understand is how we ended up in arrears when we have a water meter and received no communication from them about it? Citizens Advice says backdated bills are usually the result of the water company not knowing where the property is (common with new builds) but that doesn’t make sense with our older house.

has anyone dealt with a similar situation before? Any advice? Thanks

Devongardener

Is a meter reading shown on your bills?  If so you can compare usage over previous quarters..

fatbelly

You need to look at the actual numbers to see if your usage has increased. £75 per month is believable but I can't see why you would have been undercharged if they were working off metered readings

rainbow_fountains

Devongardener said:

Is a meter reading shown on your bills?  If so you can compare usage over previous quarters..

Sadly not. I think ours is 6 month rather than quarterly anyway.

BUT there is an average water usage on the bill for the whole year. 

2023-2024 was 401 litres a day. 

2024-2025 was 471 litres a day.

Sadly it’s not more detailed than this so doesn’t show the breakdown of the increases:

2023: £26.70 per month
2024: £59.41 per month
2025: £117.57 per month

2023-2024: £200.79 in arrears.
2024-2025: £452.37 in arrears.

I haven’t fully investigated for leaks, I just can’t see any obvious ones.

rainbow_fountains

fatbelly said:

You need to look at the actual numbers to see if your usage has increased. £75 per month is believable but I can't see why you would have been undercharged if they were working off metered readings

More details numbers posted above

 you’re right I can’t understand how we ended up in arrears when they can read the meter. The only read the meter twice a year though

Altior

On the numbers it looks like you were accumulating arrears even at nearly £60 pcm.

If the DD has been adjusted to clear down the arrears, it doesn't seem a million miles out. 

From the SW website:

From April 2025 the average household bill for combined water and wastewater will rise by 46.7%, from £1.31 per day to £1.93 per day. For the average household, fresh water only bills will go up by 40.0% from £0.55 per day to £0.77 per day and wastewater only bills by 51.5% from £0.76 per day to £1.15 per day.

Inflation and increased investment are the two key drivers of this increase. However, crucially, alongside this increase we're offering a wider range of support for customers, which includes payment holidays, discounts on bills of at least 45%, debt write-offs, access to a Hardship Fund, and even grants for household items.

MattMattMattUK

rainbow_fountains said:

fatbelly said:

You need to look at the actual numbers to see if your usage has increased. £75 per month is believable but I can't see why you would have been undercharged if they were working off metered readings

More details numbers posted above

 you’re right I can’t understand how we ended up in arrears when they can read the meter. The only read the meter twice a year though

They could have, but did they? Most non-smart water meters were not ready in 2020 or 2021 and they they were trying to catch up in 2022, so you could very easily have not had an actual read from 2019 until 2023 which as it coincided with an increase in usage easily meant an undercharge in previous years. 

If you log in online there is usually a meters section, which should show meter reads, either actual or estimated. If you can read the meter it would also be worth submitting a meter read, or at the very least checking the number on the meter is close to the last one that your supplier used. 

ButterCheese

I am not surprised by your bill, and I think everyone should look into it in more detail so well done for doing so.  When we moved in (South West Water), we only had to state how many people were living here.  We said 3 adults, 1 child.  We were on something like £64/month.  They recently have put it up to £96/month.  When I rang to question why, they could only tell me that it's because we were using more water.  They could not confirm if anyone had actually read the meter which is outside on the pavement.  When I asked how much we were using the last year compared to this year, they could not even give me a figure.  It all sounds like a bit of a racket to me

SuzeQStan

Agree with @Buttercheese & @MattMattMattUK - our meter wasn’t read for 18x months before I realised they were only estimating and by that time we were over £100 owing on the account based on the actual readings of our meter.  

Luckily we were able to pay that straight away to get back on even keel. And we now read our meter (take a photo on phone easiest way) every month to make sure we are on track

Merlin139

Have you made a complaint to Southern water about the length of time it took them to read your meter? Do the same rules about back billing apply to water as they do with Energy?

Going forward make a point of reading your meter once a month and take a photo. Record the readings on a spreadsheet and submit a reading to your supplier at least once every 3 or 6 months. I am sure they have to read the meter once a year. 

Best way to see if you could have a leak between the meter and your stop-!!!!!! is to turn off your water and go back to the meter to see if its turning. 

Green_hopeful

Are you sure there are no meter readings on your bill? If its how they are charging you then it should be included in the bill. If its an estimate then perhaps they had estimated too low and now they are on catch up. I would call and ask for more information or do a Data Subject Access request which will give you the records they hold for you. At least then you will have the information. 

471 litres a day is quite a lot. You might be able to reduce your water usage going forward. These is lots of advice on the company website. It would be worth doing a leak check. Take two meter readings an hour apart and don’t use any water. If there is usage during the hour you may have a leak. We had a 1 litre per hour use when we were not using any water. Its a tiny amount per second but 24 litres per day. Thats 8760 litres per year.