Tackling Water Poverty

Today, the Consumer Council for Water (CCWater) has announced its ‘affordability review’ which considers how the sector can support customers who genuinely struggle to pay their water bills.

We already know that many customers in the communities we serve across Wales and adjoining parts of England live in what’s called ‘water poverty’ – that is to say, they are spending 5% of more of their income on water and sewerage bills. As a not-for-profit company, we aim to put our customers at the heart of everything we do and over the last decade we have developed range of financial assistance and social tariff schemes to support low income households. We are supporting over 140,000 households with discounted bills, more than any other company in England and Wales and we are one of the few companies that invest our own profit into funding these schemes.

We have also placed huge importance on making bills as affordable as possible. That’s why, between 2010-2020, we ensured the average price our customers paid rose below inflation each year – and why we’ve also committed to ensuring it does not rise above the Consumer Price Index rate of inflation to 2025.

COVID-19 has made life incredibly challenging for so many of our customers and we expect this to continue for some time, as we start to see the impact of business closures and job losses as government support is withdrawn over coming months. Early on in the pandemic, we recognised that we would need to do more to support customers. As a result we:

• Introduced payment holidays for around 8,000 households
• Suspended bills for around 45,000 businesses forced to close during first lockdown
• Added 340,000 customers that had to shield temporarily to our Priority Services Register to ensure they receive extra support when accessing our services, and
• Donated £106,000 to support 106 foodbanks across our area.

Despite the long term impact of the pandemic still being unknown, we’ve started planning for this and we have redesigned our social tariff so that we can support an additional 70,000 people with lower bills over the next 2 years.

We are continuing our work with partners across our area, such as CAB, housing associations and local authorities, to ensure this support reaches those who need it most.

Ensuring that all of our customers can afford our services – which play an essential role in protecting public health – is and always will be the top priority for us at Welsh Water.

Samantha James, Managing Director of Household Customer Service