Paying too much for water?
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Most of us pay a charge to our water company for draining away the rain and other water which comes off our roofs and driveways. It's called surface water.
But every year tens of thousands of people pay too much on their water bill because they don't realise they don't have to pay it.
Alan Ashmore from Newark contacted Watchdog to say that his water company, Severn Trent, had been charging him every year for almost 25 years for draining away his surface water, even though he shouldn't have been paying it. Last year he paid £57 for it.
You should only pay a surface water charge if the water from your roof and driveway drains into the sewers. Instead, Alan's surface water drains off into a tank under his lawn called a soakaway. Because it doesn't go into Severn Trent's sewers, he shouldn't have been paying for it.
When Alan asked Severn Trent to investigate it told him he was entitled to a refund, but only for one year.
Drainage charges
All water companies have the same policy about giving payments back for surface water drainage charges. Not only that, the water companies also expect customers to tell them if they think they think they're being wrongly charged. Alan even had to draw a map of his drains as part of his claim.
That's left his neighbour Peter Smart scratching his head. He thinks he might be entitled to a refund as well, but because he doesn't know how to check what's going on underneath his house he has no way of proving he might be able to claim.
Watchdog brought drainage engineer Leigh Birch to Peter's house to conduct a test on his drains with some luminous dye.
To check that Peter's house was definitely connected to Severn Trent's sewer at the end of his garden Leigh flushed a teaspoon of dye into the kitchen and Peter watched the yellow water drain out into the sewer.
Unreasonable to pay the charge
But when we did the test again at the drainpipe from Peter's roof, nothing came out of the drain. Leigh said it was more than likely that Peter's house also had a soakaway, which would suggest it was unreasonable to be paying the surface water drainage charge.
Peter and Alan aren't the only people in their area affected. Up to 500 houses on their estate could be built in the same way, which means Severn Trent will have to investigate them all.
Severn Trent Water response
"In 1974, the Severn Trent Water Authority was established and responsibility for the supply of these services moved to the new authority.
"From 1967 to 1984, the charges for surface water drainage were included in the sewerage charge for all customers and were not separately identified. All customers paid for this service whether they connected or not.
"In 1984, Severn Trent elected to levy a separate charge for surface water as this would allow customers who did not make use of this service to apply for a reduction in their charges. We were the first water company to make this available. When the bills went out in 1984, we included information about these new charging arrangements and invited customers who believed their properties were not connected to the surface water system to make contact with us.
"Our procedure was to evaluate each individual case and remove the surface water charge where connection did not exist. We adopted this approach because it was felt that it was not feasible to visit every property to determine if they were connected or not (we have around 4 million properties in our area) and we believed that the vast majority of households were connected to the surface water system. The scheme included refunding any charges paid in the full year in which the claim was first made by a customer.
"Mr Ashmore first contacted Severn Trent in September 2008 to advise us that he did not believe he was connected to the surface water system. In accordance with our published policy, we completed our review on the 11th February 2009 and applied the reduction in charges from April 2008.
"Our Scheme of Charges sets out our approach to surface water drainage. This document is produced in accordance with the requirements of the Water Industry Act, 1999 and is approved by the industry regulator, OFWAT, each year. Our approach to refunding charges in the year we are made aware of the drainage arrangements is in line with practice in the rest of the water industry. The surface water rebate scheme is mentioned on every bill we send out and also features in our annual customer magazine, which is sent out with every bill. Our charging scheme is published on our website.
"Mr Ashmore has therefore been billed in accordance with the published charging scheme for all the years he has been a customer of Severn Trent.
"We do supply other properties on this estate. The information provided (above) sets out the way in which charges are determined and in particular the requirement for customers to let us know if they believe they have been incorrectly charged for surface water drainage.
"In agreement with the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) we amended our policy in 2008 to include looking at individual applications within a street to see if a pattern was developing. Where we identify a street with multiple applications, we will now undertake a wider survey to determine if further properties are connected or not. If we find properties which are not connected we will inform the customer and make the rebate in accordance with our published scheme.
"Our intention is to review all the remaining properties in Kennedy Walk by the end of April, and we will be writing to all our customers in Kennedy Walk to advise them of our plans. There are around 500 properties involved, and we have to fit this work into our wider programme of inspections across the whole of our region. We will develop a detailed plan and advise customers of our intentions by the end of April. The survey work will begin in May, and we anticipate this will take eight weeks to complete. Any properties which are identified as not being connected will be notified and the appropriate refund made.
"We have around 3,300,000 customers which are billed for services by Severn Trent. Of these, approximately 338,000 do not pay a surface water drainage charge. A number of these are new properties built since 1990, when we placed a requirement on developers to lets us know if newly-built homes were connected to the surface water drainage system or not.
"The surface water charging scheme has been running since 1984 and we have publicised its existence every year. Whilst we do not know how many other customers might be eligible for a reduced charge, we believe we have made a reasonable attempt to publicise our scheme. To demonstrate this, in 2006 we had 1,370 successful applications; in 2007 we had 1,736; and in 2008 we had 5,363. The rise in numbers is due to our new approach in identifying clusters of successful applications and doing surveys of adjacent properties.
"We hope that your programme brings the opportunity for surface water drainage charge reductions to the attention of our customers in the region. We welcome contact from any customers who believe they may be paying for surface water drainage when they are not connected."
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Comments
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All water companies are using the same system requiring consumers to take action if they do not dischsrge surface water into the public sewer.
We are on Thames Water and wrote to Watchdog about this two years ago.
Basically unless your property is in a town or city centre you will not be discharging surface water into the main sewer. Indeed under building regulations you would not be able construct a housing development in a suburban or rural location without having soakaways for surface water.
The water companies probaly know full well which properties do not discharge surface water into the main sewer but it is a nice little earner so why not just cover it in very small print on the back of the bill and continue to rake in the profits for a non-existent service with no overhead.
D Grillo, Chartered Surveyor
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I too was overcharged by Ainglian Water who said that they did not have all the maps of their pipes. Thewater industy has been privatised for nealy 20 yearsso they should be responsible for thier records.
I went to the Consumer Council and Offwat both said I wasn't entitled to a full refund. Who is Offwat supposed to be protecting the consumer or the big water companies.
I heard a court expression 'unlawfull enrichment' isn't this exactly that - thew ater companies and offwat ganging up to continue and approve of this fraud
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I contacted my water supplier years ago on this issue and all I got as an answer was "You are already on a discount for surface water". Fine, I thought, but where on my bill does it say this?
Anyone know how I could calculate this as the sewage and surface water charge are lumped together?
Cheers
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So what are the rules if the debt is owed by the householder to the water company? I live in a rural location in Cornwall with 12 bungalows connected to a communal septic tank, which had originally been private. It was 'adopted' by SWWA but they never charged us. Some time after the water companies were 'privatised' they discovered that no one had been paying for sewage, so billed us all for as I remember, between 3 and 5 years back payments. It was certainly more than one year! If the rule is that they can only refund one year's overpayment, does it follow that they can only claim one year arrears?
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Having watched your program tonight I have to report that I faced this problem with Southern Water where the whole estate were being charged for rainwater collection where the water went to soakaways.
I contacted Southern Water and they demanded that I submit an accurate plan as to where the soakaways were situated on my property.
I replied in writing that these do not appear on the plans of the property or land and as such any plan would be guesswork.
I also commented that as they had been fraudulently charging me for this service since I bought the property that I required a full rebate of the amount paid since that date.
The outcome of this situation is that I did receive a full rebate for my ten years of ownership.
I do not think that any business or company would wish to risk criminal proceedings for fraud and are liable to pay to keep the complainent quiet. The more people that are prepared to accept a platitude payment the more that they will get away with it.
Norman Gray
Ramsgate
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Soakaway - where does the water go?
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Although Mr Ashmore will never get 25 years worth of surface water charges refunded, he will be able to legally claw back six years (plus the current financial year) charges under the Limitation Act.
The problem with incorrect surface water charges has been ongoing for years in the Severn Trent region, principally for large & old industrial sites located by canals and rivers.
This was mainly as a result of ineffective verification by S-T that surface water connections actually existed which was information readily at hand to them from local council building & planning departments.
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I think your test using the dye was misleading. The water from the surface water gulley could, in a lot of cases, go to the main surface water drain in the road and therefore would not appear in the foul water drain.
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About six months ago I made our lavatories flush from rain water. The outlay was about £170. Our latest bill (metered) showed we had saved £50. The water usage had halved but the twist is that the sewerage charge was halved as well because it is based on the metered water usage although of course the amount of sewage was unchanged.
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almost the whole of our street is paying this charge ,and all have soakaways installed when the bungalows were built in the 1960s why didnt ST refer to these plans ? we all have copies our 2009 bill has amounted to over 450 pounds so how much have ST been overcharging us for over 20 years?????
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Having worked within a water company I must say that I agree with their position. This problem goes back to when the water companies were public companies. As foul and surface water was charged in a single tariff called sewerage everybody paid for surface water. In 1984 this tariff was separated in to foul water and drainage. Rather than place an unfair burden on all customers to fund a non-connection exercise the burden was placed on the minority of customers who were not connected to the sewers.
Even now the water companies could conduct a non-connection exercise but the cost would have to be borne by all households. As a customer who is connected for the the charge I do not want to subsidise those who are not.
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I think it is fair for the water company to ask the customer where their surface water is going if the customer claims it is not going into the surface water drain. The water company would have no records of the private plumbing in an individual person's house. If we expected them to conduct a survey of every house in the country, we would also have to expect them to increase the bills to cover it.
The person who claims not to know if he is paying for the charge or not only has to look at his bill. I used to pay and it showed as a separate charge. I provided proof that I had disconnected myself from the surface drain and now the charge is not shown on the bill. Simple.
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I wathched the programme as well and i'm in the process of writing to Thames Water, as we have a charge for "wastewater" and i'm assuming this is the same, or has an element included that covers the surface water issue.
The house is in a small village, built around 1990 and has all the signs that the surface water flows into an underground source, which runs through the village.
Any thoughts or info would be helpfull.
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Following the Watchdog programme on surface water charges I checked to see if the water from my gutter downpipes entered the main foul sewer as shown on the programme & it would appear the surface water from the gutters does not enter the main sewer. Upon contacting Severn Trent about this they directed me to the form at http://www.stwater.co.uk/upload/pdf/B5154_-_SWD_web_pdf.pdf to apply for a reduction in sewerage charges.
However even though the water from my roof does not enter the main foul sewer it would appear that if any water from your drive enters the gutters in the street & is drained away via this method then you are still elligable to pay the surface water charges & the form also requests a detailed plan of the following: - The way surface water drains from the property, including any gullies, manholes, inspection chambers, underground draiange pipes and areas where water soaks into the ground.
I am unsure if to pursue this or not & I think the programme was a little misleading in how easy is was to reclaim this charge and obtain a reduction on your bill, any comments on this would be useful.
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I too have been paying for surface water drainage, my property is part a development of 3, the planning application stipulates that surface water cannot enter the foul sewer. Both my neighbours do not pay this charge and I have arcitect plans showing that surface water does not connect to the foul sewer. I would like to know who if Severn Trent inspect every new development before levying this charge.
Does anyone know how the water companies make the decision? Do they just charge and expect a new customer to know that they should not be paying?
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I think people are being silly on this, one of the reasons we have experienced MASSIVE flooding, is because TOO MANY houses have soakaways instead of the water going into the sewer... In bad weather conditions, soakaways CANNOT cope and so when I purchased my house I carried out the following works...
I wanted to install Block Paving but understood this would mean that water that used to fall on the garden would be required to go somewhere else, so we dug a HUGE soakaway underneath, put in a full lenth gulley drain and connected it to the soakway but as I was having new guttering and pipes installed as well, we added another pipe to the main sewer for the house, therefore we have the following...
A soakway to take as much water it can handle to put natural water back into the ground, but in HEAVY weather conditions, the system overflows into the main sewer instead of flooding the property... my Home Insurance Company liked it and gave me a discount....!
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I watch Watchdog every week and thank you for drawing my attention to the overcharging for surface drainage water. Obviously the water companies have been rumbled. We have just received our latest bill and Anglian water have enclosed a leaflet for the first time about this. We moved into our house when it was built in 1972, so it would appear that they have been overcharging us for 37 years. We are now contacting them on this and will pursue it until we reach a satisfactory conclusion. This overcharge has always been hidden in the Standing Charge and not shown separately.
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