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Currently householders have no choice about which firm supplies their water and takes away their sewage, but there are ways to reduce your bill.
Most properties receive a water bill based on the property’s “rateable value”. This is calculated on the size of the property, its general condition and availability of local services. However, it doesn’t take into account how many people live in the property or how much water is used.
The alternative is to ask your water company to fit a water meter at your address. A water meter measures how much water you use and you are billed accordingly. The chances are that, if you have fewer people than bedrooms in your property, having a water meter will save you money - up to £125 a year, according to experts.
Under the Water Industry Act 1999, domestic customers are entitled to have water meters fitted free of installation charges. But your request can be refused if the installation would be impracticable or too expensive for the water company. A typical example would be a shared water pipe to a block of flats. In this situation it would be impossible to assess how much water each individual flat used.
Should your water company refuse to install a meter, you can ask for your bill to be based on an "assessed” or “averaged” charge instead. How this is calculated varies from company to company. Some companies calculate this charge based on the number of occupants, some use the type of property, some the number of bedrooms and some the average household charge.
For those people who can have a water meter fitted there are plenty of ways to reduce bills – take showers instead of baths, fix dripping taps, buy a "save-a-flush" device for the toilet, turn the tap off when brushing your teeth, cut down on the number of times you water the garden and don’t use dishwashers or washing machines until they are full.
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