Water everywhere

By coincidence the water regulators OFWAT today announced their decision on how much water companies will be allowed to charge their customers in the coming financial year, allowing for a forecast rate of 5.2% in inflation as measured by RPI.

Thames Water bills are expected to rise by about 6.7%, 1% above the national average of 5.7%, but that is mainly down to a hefty 10% increase in the charge for the sewage component, which nevertheless remains the lowest in the country, & only half of what people living in the South West have to pay for the high cost of new sewers which do not simply dump all their waste into the sea.

It is a long time since I paid too much attention to how much we pay for water, but looking at OFWAT’s figures in today’s press release it strikes me that we get a real bargain. The average household pays of the order of £400 – half for having water constantly on tap, half for taking all the dirty water away without any effort on our part.

£200 is rather less than someone who buys just one fairly bog standard 500ml of water in a plastic bottle each working day would spend in the course of a year.

Link
Water and sewerage bills to rise in 2012

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