Anna Walker has published the final report of her independent review of charging for water and sewerage services. She is right to highlight that bills need to remain affordable if there is to continue to be the required consensus on investing to improve our environment. She may also be right that metering is the fairest and most effective way to charge customers for their use. But there is devil in the detail: what tariffs are proposed?; what differences between customers will be tolerated?; Do/Will meter charges recover the full cost of metering and the service provided?
Metering is often chosen now because a household could reduce its bill- there is nothing wrong with that provided that they pay a reasonable price for the service that is provided. Metering adds about 10% to the average household bill; so if it encourages savings of broadly the same magnitude then it is beneficial. But as people switch from a tariff structure which deliberately contained a not insubstantial degree of social protection, how are those who benefitted to be protected when those who have opted to a meter no longer contribute? This is a matter for Government to resolve- not water companies and not regulators.
Anna Walker rightly suggests that the problem will become more acute. The differential between measured and unmeasured average bills continues to grow. Anna highlights the issue in the SouthWest, but it is becoming more common in other areas too.
This will encourage households to switch and leave those who pay the unmeasured rate with an ever higher bill. This will threaten the investment that the industry needs.