The cost-of-living crisis has caused fuel and energy bills to rise sharply, but water customers in some parts of the country have also seen their bills rise. BBC News asks what’s behind it.
Of the 11 water and sewerage companies in England and Wales, Northumbrian Water (10.8%) and Severn Trent (7.1%) customers have seen the highest average bill increases.
Customers of some other companies have seen their average bills drop.
Customers have expressed their anger.
Steve Willey, from Sherwood, Nottingham, is served by Severn Trent Water, which is experiencing the second highest average rise in the country. He said the raise “wasn’t fair.”
“The cost of living keeps going up all the time right now. It seems like the bills are going up and the national insurance keeps going up,” she said.
“People are going to have a hard time heating their homes right now. I’m very upset about that, very angry.”
MPs have also criticized the increases, with Ashfield’s Lee Anderson saying: “I understand the argument that they have extra costs, but a 7% increase when, in other areas of the country, it’s around 3-4% – they really need analyze it”. again.”
Inflation is the main reason, according to regulator Ofwat.
All water companies can increase bills in line with inflation. As a result, some bills increase significantly due to rising rates of inflation.
However, some water companies have also been allowed to charge their customers more.
The companies operate in five-year business cycles, the last one until 2025, where Ofwat approves the services they will provide and the amount they will charge for them.
A review by the Competition and Marketing Authority (CMA) approved part of the investment that Ofwat had initially ruled out.
This has meant that four companies (Anglian, Bristol, Northumbrian and Yorkshire) saw changes to their price controls.
Currently, customers do not bear the costs of fines imposed on water companies due to non-compliance with standards, according to the Consumers Council on Water (CCW).
This means that when companies like Severn Trent are fined £1.5m for sewage discharge, it reduces their profits, rather than adding to bills.
However, customers ultimately finance the costs of upgrading standards, and the challenges they face in different regions play a role in the discrepancy in billing.
Environment Secretary George Eustice said concerns about water companies dumping raw sewage into rivers were likely to fuel the next deal in 2025, with customers ending up paying.
He told the BBC: “The truth is you can’t make the kind of investments we need to improve sewerage infrastructure, without some payment somewhere.
“That’s why we’re making the decision not to eliminate all storm surge overnight because the cost of that could be several hundred billion pounds and that would be a very, very sharp increase in water bills.
“But we are taking a pragmatic approach that reduces the most damaging storm surges, and there will be a cost associated with that.
“Everything in the end has to be paid for somehow.
“And if you’re going to have that goal to reduce wastewater overflows into the water, there’s a cost to putting that kind of infrastructure in place.”
While Northumbrian Water and Severn Trent have seen the highest increases for 2022/23, their average bills, at £365 and £389 respectively, are still lower than other parts of the country.
Average bills in Cornwall, Devon and parts of Somerset and Dorset, served by South West Water, were £472.
Customers in that region get a reduction from the government, due to the region’s long coastline and the amount of bathing water that requires maintenance.
Users of Wessex Water, which also supplies water to Somerset and Dorset, as well as Bristol and Wiltshire, saw average bills of £470.
Experts say the wide variation in bills is due to factors such as the spread of the population (dense urban areas tend to cost less to supply) and the amount of coastline the region has.
South West Water said, “Providing our services in a large geographic area that includes about a third of the country’s bathing water means we need more treatment works and thousands of miles of pipeline.”
A Wessex Water spokesperson said, “Bills in the region are slightly higher than in other parts of the country because there are more pipes per customer to maintain and the cost of moving water in our region is high.”
While the water industry said it has support for anyone struggling to pay their bills, consumers fear this, too, lacks standardization.
The CCW, a consumer body, said there were wide regional variations in the percentage of households receiving support.
He said the problem is particularly acute in regions like the Northwest, where 12% of households need support, but only about 3% of households currently receive such help.
In the Severn Trent region, he said only around 21% of people facing water poverty were lifted out of it by current support schemes.
The schemes differ throughout the country, depending on the agreements that the companies have with their clients, whose invoices finance said support.
CCW Senior Policy Manager Andrew White said: “This is a huge concern for us and we have set out a number of different recommendations to replace the current postcode support lottery.
“Water is often one of the first bills to go unpaid, because you can’t be cut off from the supply. But there are also many families who suffer in silence, who pay for water but make sacrifices on other bills, such as food. “
Christine McGourty, chief executive of Water UK, the trade association representing water companies, said: “I urge anyone who is concerned to contact their water company.
Both Severn Trent and Northumbrian Water said that while they have seen the highest increases, the amount they charge remains below average bills in other parts of the country.
Northumbrian Water said: “Our bills remain the lowest combined water and sewerage rates in England and continue to be less than what our customers paid for their water rates in 2019/2020.”
They said they were working on a number of projects in the North East to improve the company’s environmental performance, such as spending £30m on sewer improvements in County Durham and an investigation into the quality of bathing water at Marsden Beach. , on South Tyneside.
They said they were also spending £145m on the supply network in County Durham and Teesside, replacing sections that were over 100 years old.
Northumbrian Water chief executive Heidi Mottram said: “These essential investments, coupled with the rising costs of inflation, mean we need to increase our prices by a small amount.”
A Severn Trent spokesperson said: “The recent change in customer bills is related to inflation, reflecting the increased cost of living we are experiencing across our supply chain.
“This also takes into account the levels of investment we are making in our infrastructure and the environment.”
Nadia Whittome, Labor MP for Nottingham East, has called for private companies to return to public ownership.
“Water has a monopoly, which means people have no choice over who their water provider is. Companies like Severn Trent can charge whatever they want and privatization is actually costing us more money,” he said.
But so far, the government has been lukewarm about such suggestions.
The increase in bills, he said, was in line with income controls set by Ofwat.
With regard to water poverty, CCW is hoping to get government support for a single water bill assistance scheme, which would standardize support.
But this may not happen until 2025, and campaigners argue that many clients need help now.
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