Thames Water, Britain's biggest water company, this morning took the unprecedented step of declaring an amnesty for customers who use water without ever receiving a bill.
Thames Water supplies water to more than three million properties across London and the Thames Valley. However, many older properties have been divided up over the years and in some cases no-one has informed the company of the change, meaning that separate bills have not been set up. The same thing can happen if a new property is built and connected to the water network without the company being notified.
Thames Water said that it wants to get its records straight so that all its customers receive the correct bills and to ensure the company receives the income it needs to maintain and improve the service it provides.
Thames is currently conducting a detailed audit of its entire customer base, looking at every property. The company said it is running the six-week amnesty, during which unbilled residential customers are invited to come forward, to speed things up, and be as fair as possible.
Customers who get in touch voluntarily will not be charged for their previous water use. However, if they are discovered after the amnesty period has closed on March 3 they will face back-charges for unpaid bills. The amnesty will not apply to customers whose accounts are already in the normal process of being set up, even though they may not yet have received their first Thames Water bill.
Mike Tempest, Customer Services Director, said:
"If you are receiving water from us but are not being billed for it, please call us on 0800 072 3628. We believe this is the quickest and fairest way to tackle a significant problem. We are going to walk every street in our region over the next three months, checking our records against the addresses and door bells.
"When we find unbilled residential customers we can and will back-charge them to the date that they moved into the property, going back for up to six years. Under the six-week amnesty we're launching, the really good news for these customers is that we'll waive all back charges provided they agree to be billed and pay for their water and waste water from now on.
"This is the first amnesty of its kind in the UK water industry - and we have got two main reasons for doing it - firstly, we want our bills to be as affordable as possible - and the extra income we get from currently unbilled customers will help achieve that.
"Secondly, we need an accurate picture of where our water goes in each part of our network: if it's going to customers, we want it to be recorded as such, rather than being unaccounted for.”