Water Bills

 A few years ago, we switched from an unmetered potable water supply to a water meter. For the first 18 months or so, I kept a monthly check on water usage to reassure myself that everything was going to plan (i.e. lower water charges¹). Since then I've just monitored the costs on a 6-monthly basis when I receive a notification from our water company, Dwr Cymru (aka Welsh Water).

Note 1: includes sewerage charges

Photo 1: Water Meter

The supply of potable water and the treatment of sewage is, to be honest, a bit of a shambles in the United Kingdom. Prior to 1989, these services were performed by public bodies (i.e. owned and operated by the government). Under the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher (1979 - 1990), there was a huge drive to sell off (i.e. privatise) government assets including the regional water companies.

The reasons given for selling the family silver were various and included reducing National Debt, lowering Government spending and improving efficiency through increased competition (which would lead to lower household bills). Other less palatable reasons were ideological (Margaret Thatcher was a big fan of neoliberal polices such as small government, reduced regulation and low tax), financial (cash for giveaway tax cuts), and gerrymandering (your archetypal Conservative voter is a home owner, holds investments such as stocks & shares, and wants low taxation so they can keep more of their hard-earned money).

According to Wikipedia, a total of £47 billion was raised from the sale of:

• Britoil (1982)
• Amersham Internation (1982)
• British Telecom (1984)
• Sealink (1984)
• British Petroleum (1979-1987)
• British Aerospace (1985-1987)
• British Gas (1986)
• Rolls Royce (1987)
• British Leyland/Rover Group (1988)
• British Steel Corporation (1988)
• British Rail (1993)*
• Sale of Council Houses (1979 to 2024 and beyond)**

* Conservative government with John Major as Prime Minister

** Conservative (1979-1997), Labour (1997-2010), Conservative-LibDem Coalition (2010-2015), Conservative (2015-2024), Labour (2024-)

Private financial institutions, neoliberal economists and conservative political parties will happily sing the praises of privatization . Apparently, it never fails ad everyone benefits. Certainly, some privatisations do work although they are usually in business areas where governments should only be regulators rather than owners (oil & gas, telecoms, manufacturing, etc). When it comes to public services (e.g. water, electricity, rail transport), however, dissatisfaction levels are much higher and so are the failures. The two main reasons why such public utilities fail when privatized are: (i) a fragmented industry (necessary to introduce competition) increases inefficiency and adds a huge amount of complexity (e.g. a plethora of new ticketing options in the rail industry that nobody understands and simply costs more to administer); (ii) if the privatized industry is still a monopoly - for example, I cannot choose my water company.

Anyway, back to our water bills. Before changing to a metered supply, our last unmetered annual water bill was £1,124.70 (1st April 2019 to 31st March 2020). This was an increase of £25.72 on the previous year's bill. The regulatory body for the water companies (England & Wales) is Ofwat who set the amounts by which bills are allowed to increase each year. On this (approximate) basis, I guess we would now be paying around £1,250 per year (1st April 2024 to 31st March 2025).

We pay for our metered supply by monthly direct debit. This started out at £41 per month in 2020, when the meter was first installed, but is set at only £30 per month for the coming year. On that basis, we are only paying about one quarter the amount for our water supply (and sewerage) than we would if we were still on an unmetered supply.

So I ask the question: are we especially frugal when it comes to our water usage? For the UK, the average water use is approximately 150 litres per person per day. The Dwr Cymru website provides a handy little graphic showing our average daily use (based on just two readings a year) - see Figure 1.

Figure 1: Our Daily Water Usage

We were obviously quite profligate in our water use to begin with; averaging about 165 litres per person per day. The high points in Figure 1 cover the summer months when garden watering is occasionally required. Through a number of water saving measures, we have brought this down to around 115 litres/person/day. These include: 2,400 litres of stored rainwater in water butts, using a bowl in the washing up sink to collect grey water for the garden, not flushing the loo every time, only running the washing machine and dishwasher when full, showers only, don't wash the car, jet wash the patio every 2-3 years, spot watering in the kitchen garden.

Figure 2 compares our per person use of water against a typical Welsh person.

Figure 2: Our Water Usage vs the Average Welsh Person

Despite a largish garden (and kitchen garden) to maintain, we are now below average in the amount of water we use. And the only downsides are a dirtier car and patio!

In Figure 3, our average daily water use (litres) is plotted against the Day Number since the meter was installed. A noticeable decline though possibly levelling off. Further savings will be much harder to achieve. The rationale behind installing water meters was that it would result in more efficient (i.e. less) water usage - this has been borne out empirically.

Figure 3: Decline in Water Use with Time

Smart water meters are the next planned development. In addition to providing real time usage data to the householder, they will also enable the water companies to quickly identify and fix water leaks.