Most of us pay a charge to our water company for draining away the rain and other water which comes off our roofs and driveways. It's called surface water.
But every year tens of thousands of people pay too much on their water bill because they don't realise they don't have to pay it.
Alan Ashmore from Newark contacted Watchdog to say that his water company, Severn Trent, had been charging him every year for almost 25 years for draining away his surface water, even though he shouldn't have been paying it. Last year he paid £57 for it.
You should only pay a surface water charge if the water from your roof and driveway drains into the sewers. Instead, Alan's surface water drains off into a tank under his lawn called a soakaway. Because it doesn't go into Severn Trent's sewers, he shouldn't have been paying for it.
When Alan asked Severn Trent to investigate it told him he was entitled to a refund, but only for one year.
Drainage charges
All water companies have the same policy about giving payments back for surface water drainage charges. Not only that, the water companies also expect customers to tell them if they think they think they're being wrongly charged. Alan even had to draw a map of his drains as part of his claim.
That's left his neighbour Peter Smart scratching his head. He thinks he might be entitled to a refund as well, but because he doesn't know how to check what's going on underneath his house he has no way of proving he might be able to claim.
Watchdog brought drainage engineer Leigh Birch to Peter's house to conduct a test on his drains with some luminous dye.
To check that Peter's house was definitely connected to Severn Trent's sewer at the end of his garden Leigh flushed a teaspoon of dye into the kitchen and Peter watched the yellow water drain out into the sewer.
Unreasonable to pay the charge
But when we did the test again at the drainpipe from Peter's roof, nothing came out of the drain. Leigh said it was more than likely that Peter's house also had a soakaway, which would suggest it was unreasonable to be paying the surface water drainage charge.
Peter and Alan aren't the only people in their area affected. Up to 500 houses on their estate could be built in the same way, which means Severn Trent will have to investigate them all.
Severn Trent Water response
"In 1974, the Severn Trent Water Authority was established and responsibility for the supply of these services moved to the new authority.
"From 1967 to 1984, the charges for surface water drainage were included in the sewerage charge for all customers and were not separately identified. All customers paid for this service whether they connected or not.
"In 1984, Severn Trent elected to levy a separate charge for surface water as this would allow customers who did not make use of this service to apply for a reduction in their charges. We were the first water company to make this available. When the bills went out in 1984, we included information about these new charging arrangements and invited customers who believed their properties were not connected to the surface water system to make contact with us.
"Our procedure was to evaluate each individual case and remove the surface water charge where connection did not exist. We adopted this approach because it was felt that it was not feasible to visit every property to determine if they were connected or not (we have around 4 million properties in our area) and we believed that the vast majority of households were connected to the surface water system. The scheme included refunding any charges paid in the full year in which the claim was first made by a customer.
"Mr Ashmore first contacted Severn Trent in September 2008 to advise us that he did not believe he was connected to the surface water system. In accordance with our published policy, we completed our review on the 11th February 2009 and applied the reduction in charges from April 2008.
"Our Scheme of Charges sets out our approach to surface water drainage. This document is produced in accordance with the requirements of the Water Industry Act, 1999 and is approved by the industry regulator, OFWAT, each year. Our approach to refunding charges in the year we are made aware of the drainage arrangements is in line with practice in the rest of the water industry. The surface water rebate scheme is mentioned on every bill we send out and also features in our annual customer magazine, which is sent out with every bill. Our charging scheme is published on our website.
"Mr Ashmore has therefore been billed in accordance with the published charging scheme for all the years he has been a customer of Severn Trent.
"We do supply other properties on this estate. The information provided (above) sets out the way in which charges are determined and in particular the requirement for customers to let us know if they believe they have been incorrectly charged for surface water drainage.
"In agreement with the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) we amended our policy in 2008 to include looking at individual applications within a street to see if a pattern was developing. Where we identify a street with multiple applications, we will now undertake a wider survey to determine if further properties are connected or not. If we find properties which are not connected we will inform the customer and make the rebate in accordance with our published scheme.
"Our intention is to review all the remaining properties in Kennedy Walk by the end of April, and we will be writing to all our customers in Kennedy Walk to advise them of our plans. There are around 500 properties involved, and we have to fit this work into our wider programme of inspections across the whole of our region. We will develop a detailed plan and advise customers of our intentions by the end of April. The survey work will begin in May, and we anticipate this will take eight weeks to complete. Any properties which are identified as not being connected will be notified and the appropriate refund made.
"We have around 3,300,000 customers which are billed for services by Severn Trent. Of these, approximately 338,000 do not pay a surface water drainage charge. A number of these are new properties built since 1990, when we placed a requirement on developers to lets us know if newly-built homes were connected to the surface water drainage system or not.
"The surface water charging scheme has been running since 1984 and we have publicised its existence every year. Whilst we do not know how many other customers might be eligible for a reduced charge, we believe we have made a reasonable attempt to publicise our scheme. To demonstrate this, in 2006 we had 1,370 successful applications; in 2007 we had 1,736; and in 2008 we had 5,363. The rise in numbers is due to our new approach in identifying clusters of successful applications and doing surveys of adjacent properties.
"We hope that your programme brings the opportunity for surface water drainage charge reductions to the attention of our customers in the region. We welcome contact from any customers who believe they may be paying for surface water drainage when they are not connected."
Paying too much for water?
But every year tens of thousands of people pay too much on their water bill because they don't realise they don't have to pay it.
Alan Ashmore from Newark contacted Watchdog to say that his water company, Severn Trent, had been charging him every year for almost 25 years for draining away his surface water, even though he shouldn't have been paying it. Last year he paid £57 for it.
You should only pay a surface water charge if the water from your roof and driveway drains into the sewers. Instead, Alan's surface water drains off into a tank under his lawn called a soakaway. Because it doesn't go into Severn Trent's sewers, he shouldn't have been paying for it.
When Alan asked Severn Trent to investigate it told him he was entitled to a refund, but only for one year.
Drainage charges
All water companies have the same policy about giving payments back for surface water drainage charges. Not only that, the water companies also expect customers to tell them if they think they think they're being wrongly charged. Alan even had to draw a map of his drains as part of his claim.
That's left his neighbour Peter Smart scratching his head. He thinks he might be entitled to a refund as well, but because he doesn't know how to check what's going on underneath his house he has no way of proving he might be able to claim.
Watchdog brought drainage engineer Leigh Birch to Peter's house to conduct a test on his drains with some luminous dye.
To check that Peter's house was definitely connected to Severn Trent's sewer at the end of his garden Leigh flushed a teaspoon of dye into the kitchen and Peter watched the yellow water drain out into the sewer.
Unreasonable to pay the charge
But when we did the test again at the drainpipe from Peter's roof, nothing came out of the drain. Leigh said it was more than likely that Peter's house also had a soakaway, which would suggest it was unreasonable to be paying the surface water drainage charge.
Peter and Alan aren't the only people in their area affected. Up to 500 houses on their estate could be built in the same way, which means Severn Trent will have to investigate them all.
Severn Trent Water response
"In 1974, the Severn Trent Water Authority was established and responsibility for the supply of these services moved to the new authority.
"From 1967 to 1984, the charges for surface water drainage were included in the sewerage charge for all customers and were not separately identified. All customers paid for this service whether they connected or not.
"In 1984, Severn Trent elected to levy a separate charge for surface water as this would allow customers who did not make use of this service to apply for a reduction in their charges. We were the first water company to make this available. When the bills went out in 1984, we included information about these new charging arrangements and invited customers who believed their properties were not connected to the surface water system to make contact with us.
"Our procedure was to evaluate each individual case and remove the surface water charge where connection did not exist. We adopted this approach because it was felt that it was not feasible to visit every property to determine if they were connected or not (we have around 4 million properties in our area) and we believed that the vast majority of households were connected to the surface water system. The scheme included refunding any charges paid in the full year in which the claim was first made by a customer.
"Mr Ashmore first contacted Severn Trent in September 2008 to advise us that he did not believe he was connected to the surface water system. In accordance with our published policy, we completed our review on the 11th February 2009 and applied the reduction in charges from April 2008.
"Our Scheme of Charges sets out our approach to surface water drainage. This document is produced in accordance with the requirements of the Water Industry Act, 1999 and is approved by the industry regulator, OFWAT, each year. Our approach to refunding charges in the year we are made aware of the drainage arrangements is in line with practice in the rest of the water industry. The surface water rebate scheme is mentioned on every bill we send out and also features in our annual customer magazine, which is sent out with every bill. Our charging scheme is published on our website.
"Mr Ashmore has therefore been billed in accordance with the published charging scheme for all the years he has been a customer of Severn Trent.
"We do supply other properties on this estate. The information provided (above) sets out the way in which charges are determined and in particular the requirement for customers to let us know if they believe they have been incorrectly charged for surface water drainage.
"In agreement with the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) we amended our policy in 2008 to include looking at individual applications within a street to see if a pattern was developing. Where we identify a street with multiple applications, we will now undertake a wider survey to determine if further properties are connected or not. If we find properties which are not connected we will inform the customer and make the rebate in accordance with our published scheme.
"Our intention is to review all the remaining properties in Kennedy Walk by the end of April, and we will be writing to all our customers in Kennedy Walk to advise them of our plans. There are around 500 properties involved, and we have to fit this work into our wider programme of inspections across the whole of our region. We will develop a detailed plan and advise customers of our intentions by the end of April. The survey work will begin in May, and we anticipate this will take eight weeks to complete. Any properties which are identified as not being connected will be notified and the appropriate refund made.
"We have around 3,300,000 customers which are billed for services by Severn Trent. Of these, approximately 338,000 do not pay a surface water drainage charge. A number of these are new properties built since 1990, when we placed a requirement on developers to lets us know if newly-built homes were connected to the surface water drainage system or not.
"The surface water charging scheme has been running since 1984 and we have publicised its existence every year. Whilst we do not know how many other customers might be eligible for a reduced charge, we believe we have made a reasonable attempt to publicise our scheme. To demonstrate this, in 2006 we had 1,370 successful applications; in 2007 we had 1,736; and in 2008 we had 5,363. The rise in numbers is due to our new approach in identifying clusters of successful applications and doing surveys of adjacent properties.
"We hope that your programme brings the opportunity for surface water drainage charge reductions to the attention of our customers in the region. We welcome contact from any customers who believe they may be paying for surface water drainage when they are not connected."
Paying too much for water?