Cash down the drain: Could YOU reclaim for bogus water charges?
A.D. writes: I live on a council estate and recently discovered that we are on a soakaway for surface water drainage – and not the national drains that are the general rule. Yet we have been charged for years for drains we do not have. I emailed Anglian Water and received a £265 refund. I contacted Suffolk County Council and found that all of our estate is on the soakaway. I asked Anglian Water to backdate my claim to when I moved into my property in Kesgrave, Ipswich, but they say three years is the maximum.
YOU must be the most popular man on your estate, except perhaps with Anglian Water. You told both your neighbours about the soakaway and they reclaimed £321 and £365 respectively. That leaves around 400 more homes with a potential claim.
What I found hard to believe was that Anglian Water was charging hundreds of families hundreds of pounds for a service it did not provide. Yet this is exactly what has happened.
The firm said: ‘If a property is solely connected to a soakaway, the owner is entitled to a reduction. If the property was built up to the year 2000 the way to confirm this is by looking at the deeds.’
Anglian says it has no access to title deeds, so it relies on customers to appeal if they think they have been overcharged. But how many people – particularly council tenants – actually have their property title deeds, or know what to look for? This is like getting to the supermarket checkout and being charged for Champagne you never bought, only to be told that everyone is charged unless they protest.
You might think that the watchdog Ofwat would be up in arms about this. Not so. It only expected water companies to grant refunds for the current year, which makes three years of backdated refunds look generous.
Also, Ofwat only expects companies to monitor properties built since 2001. Anyone who lives in an older property is expected to know about soakaways, do their own research and lodge an appeal.
Andy White, senior policy manager at the Consumer Council for Water, told me: ‘All sewerage companies now offer rebates that go beyond the current financial year after we challenged those that did not do so.’
Anglian Water told me: ‘When the surface water rebate was introduced, our regulator Ofwat agreed it would not be cost-effective for us to investigate and survey the many millions of properties we serve to obtain individual connection details.’
As a result of your appeal, the company says it has contacted other residents in your area. But this is clearly a national issue and not a problem that involves just one company and one council estate.
I do wonder how much money the water companies nationally are raking in by charging real money for a fictitious service.