Rosie Cooper – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rosie Cooper on 2015-11-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department plans to take steps to ensure that water and sewerage charges for schools reflect actual costs incurred by the water company.

Rory Stewart

The amount that water and sewerage companies can charge their customers is subject to a cap set by Ofwat, the independent economic regulator. Ofwat has statutory duties to ensure that customer charges are fair and that the companies are able to finance the essential services they provide.

Working within Ofwat’s regulatory framework, water companies have choices to make about how they apportion costs for the different services they provide across different groups of customers. All water and sewerage companies have to remove and treat the rainwater that drains into public sewers, so a surface water drainage charge is included in all customers’ bills. Some companies average these costs across all their customers, while others charge their non-household customers according to the amount of water that drains from their property into the sewer. This is known as site area charging; its aim is to ensure that charges reflect the actual costs associated with providing a drainage service to that customer.

This approach to charging results in reductions to the bills of some customers. However, it can increase the bills of some organisations, such as schools, that manage larger sites. The Government is aware of concerns about the impact of surface water drainage charges on schools in the North West. In light of this we will be reviewing our Guidance to Water and Sewerage Undertakers in relation to Concessionary Schemes for Community Groups for Surface Water Drainage Charges.