A report in the Sunday Times on 27th February has claimed that water companies in England and Wales have overcharged consumers almost £1.7 billion for services they have not used.
The story is based on a report produced by SmartSource Water, a company which audits water bills. SmartSource Water’s Managing Director, Peter Kaye, is a former Operations Manager at Thames Water.
Mr. Kaye told the Sunday Times:
“Millions of customers have been overcharged hundreds of pounds over the years.
In many cases, the water companies know the they are charging for services that customers don’t even get but don’t do anything about it.”
During the last 18 months SmartSource Water has reviewed over 20,000 water bills.
The overcharging is apparently related to consumers wrongly being billed for the cost of rainwater running from their properties into public sewers. The report claims that an estimated 4.8M customers have been charged for “surface drainage” – despite the fact that run-off from their properties does not in fact discharge into water companies’ public drains.
In November last year SmartSource lost an appeal to the Information Tribunal which sought to require 16 water companies to provide billing records and other information under the Environment Information Regulations(EIR). Under the EIR, all public bodies must disclose data when requested, in a similar way to the Freedom of Information Requests. In March last year the Information Commissioner's Office ruled that water companies are not public authorities for the purposes of the Regulations - confirmed in November 2010 by the Upper Tribunal.