Opinion : Why can’t we change our water supplier?

Just at the moment a plethora of bills seem to be dropping through the letterbox of my ancestral home.

A few days ago the bill for water services arrived. Upon opening the envelope my good self nearly fell over when I saw how much money they wanted this year.

‘By George!‘ I exclaimed. ‘It’s almost £1,000 for water this year!‘.

Quickly your humble servant retired to the drawing room to sit down in my favourite arm chair to recover.

Water is rather unusual when compared to the other services because many homes, like mine, are still charged by values that are the modern equivalent of the old water rates.

My bill may be expensive but I can literally use as much water as I like for a fixed amount.

When it comes to other services like electricity, gas and telephone there is a clearly defined cost per unit of energy however it seems awfully hard to find out what the cost of what is per gallon, or should that be meter in the newfangled metric measurements?

Why should anyone change from an ‘as much as you like’ charging model when conversion to metered supply is leap into the unknown?

When it comes to electricity, gas and telephone if one is not happy with the service or cost it’s ever so simple to change supplier however it’s not possible to change water supplier.

Sadly it seems that water users are sitting ducks at the mercy of the large water companies who know full well the poor consumers, like my good self, have to pay up whatever they demand.

I think it’s time there was a clearly defined and easy to find set of charges on how much water costs per unit. Also water consumers should be able to change supplier so they can get a better deal if their current supplier is too expensive.

While water rates are still used to calculate water bills there is no incentive to save water at all. If everyone had to pay for the water they used perhaps people would use less so they could reap the financial benefits of their savings.

Water is an essential service yet it seems the local water company has a monopoly on supply in their local region and there is nothing the consumers can do.

What do you think?

*My blogs are published every Tuesday and Friday evening around 8.00pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.

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