water surge pricing

[a1ex2001]

It's because the attitude to hygiene has changed in the UK. We are copying the Americans, who traditionally are more obsessive in this area. Back in the 1980s two showers/baths a week was seen as very respectable. I remember being lectured by my grandmother (who was born in 1917) back then about how you only need to have water up to your ankle in a bath to have a proper bath and any more was a waste. But nowadays, most people shower once a day. Also, washing your car back then was something you did only when it was obviously dirty, not something you feel obliged to do once a week!

You are right and wrong the increase in showering and bathing is one of many factors, we over wash ourselves (many people having multiple showers per day) we over wash our clothes and other linen, we use to much crockery. We waste hundreds of litres of drinking water washing cars and watering ornamental gardens both of which are getting worse as cars have evolved into status symbols and global warming has turned our grass brown.

The answer can never be solely stopping leaks, or building more reservoirs we need to educate people and reduce usage which almost certainly means compulsory water meters so people at least need some idea of how much they are using and a cost directly attached to that. We also need to mandate grey water systems in new builds and subsidise them in older houses the water boards could give every house a water butt for starters instead of paying a dividend this year!

 

[grudas]

Leakage is falling, they are at the lowest they have been since records began, yes the water companies can and should do better but had waving away a massive growth in consumption and building regulations that don’t recognise the problem isn’t going to help. It is a classic case of people making a convenient excuse to avoid altering their behaviour.

Altering my behaviour? I dunno. They raised my bills by 45% this year. They can do one if they think I’ll be avoiding a shower.

 

[Tram]

dont shower

 

[Hagar]

I make do with one cup per day. I refill if quite a few times though.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Water butts aren’t a lot of use of it doesn’t rain. My two have been in a permanent state of empty since April.

As for grey water systems, that isn’t happening and time soon, it was hard enough to get developers to start installing solar panels at an absolute tiny cost (£50 each), the mounting systems are effectively free because they replace roof tiles while being cheaper, quicker and easier to install. You are talking about a ~£1500 cost to a developer to install an 8 panel system including an inverter at the time of construction.

You are looking at a minimum of £4000 for the home owner to retrofit.

As for retrofitting grey water systems, that’s never happening. We’ve not even started retrofitting separate drains for rain water run off and grey/black water from homes. I’d argue this is a much higher priority.

In reality the U.K. is still pretty wet and there generally isn’t a shortage of drinking water, we’ve just not bothered to expand our storage capacity despite the population increasing by 20%.

 

[200sols]

Yeah water butts are fine when it rains. I have several water containers down the allotment, all dry since about March. There just has been no rain to top them up.

 

[a1ex2001]

Water butts aren’t a lot of use of it doesn’t rain. My two have been in a permanent state of empty since April.

As for grey water systems, that isn’t happening and time soon, it was hard enough to get developers to start installing solar panels at an absolute tiny cost (£50 each), the mounting systems are effectively free because they replace roof tiles while being cheaper, quicker and easier to install. You are talking about a ~£1500 cost to a developer to install an 8 panel system including an inverter at the time of construction.

You are looking at a minimum of £4000 for the home owner to retrofit.

As for retrofitting grey water systems, that’s never happening. We’ve not even started retrofitting separate drains for rain water run off and grey/black water from homes. I’d argue this is a much higher priority.

In reality the U.K. is still pretty wet and there generally isn’t a shortage of drinking water, we’ve just not bothered to expand our storage capacity despite the population increasing by 20%.

The new build issue with both Solar Panels and grey water could be fixed tomorrow by the government simply demanding both for building regs compliance, this would drive up sales in both sectors and inevitably reduce costs. They should also insist that all new build properties are correctly orientated to maximise solar gains.

Water butts installed in every house in the uk would have delayed the need for hosepipe bans significantly yes they would now be empty(ish) but think of the quantities of water that wouldn’t have been drawn at the start of the gardening season?

There is no one simple solution we need a combination of more reservoirs and usage reduction as there is no way we can build enough storage sensibly to cope with an ever growing demand and global warming. Simply putting the problem entirely in the water company is a lazy way of shirking personal responsibility.

 

[NetMan]

Why are new houses built with three or more bathrooms?

Children can't afford to move out they are living with their parents longer the same reason houses end up with 3 or 4 cars parked on their drive; water usage stays the same just less need to timetable showers etc in a busy household or fight for the bathroom when everyone picks up a stomach bug.

Back in the 1980s two showers/baths a week was seen as very respectable.

It was called poverty, the electric water heater was only switched on once a week any other day you boiled a kettle or washed with cold water; my parents gen recall having a tin bath in front of the coal fire when they were young what fun that must have been heating water for a bath on the gas stove.

Water butts installed in every house in the uk would have delayed the need for hosepipe bans significantly yes they would now be empty(ish) but think of the quantities of water that wouldn’t have been drawn at the start of the gardening season?

There's lots of high density housing / people without gardens and a lot of people don't water their gardens but it makes sense for those that do; but one has to wonder with all the talk about micro plastics now how good plastic pipes and water tanks are for us and the environment.

 

[Maple Leaf]

I agree with the showering however washing a car once a week is obsessive.

Yes, I would never do it. But I visit my local petrol station on Friday nights to buy some key groceries (it's easier than cycling to the nearest supermarket) and I always see the same boy-racer types cleaning their cars at the Jet Wash there. Obviously, they aren't a representative cross-section of the UK population, but I didn't wash my car every week at their age. (Commercial enterprises are excluded from the hosepipe ban so they can carry on as normal.)

You are right and wrong the increase in showering and bathing is one of many factors, we over wash ourselves (many people having multiple showers per day) we over wash our clothes and other linen, we use to much crockery.

There are plenty of people who don't wash themselves or their clothes enough. I often find myself sitting across from them on the bus!

We waste hundreds of litres of drinking water washing cars and watering ornamental gardens both of which are getting worse as cars have evolved into status symbols and global warming has turned our grass brown.

Again, it depends on their background. Some people never water their gardens and neglect them, others just pave over them.

The answer can never be solely stopping leaks, or building more reservoirs we need to educate people and reduce usage which almost certainly means compulsory water meters so people at least need some idea of how much they are using and a cost directly attached to that. We also need to mandate grey water systems in new builds and subsidise them in older houses the water boards could give every house a water butt for starters instead of paying a dividend this year!

I agree that the water we have needs to be used more efficiently and rainwater/grey-water collection systems should be utilised widely. However, the privatised water companies have not been investing in infrastructure enough and their shareholders have been extracting profits from captive British consumers. There was an interesting article published about this today by George Monbiot:

...Margaret Thatcher promised that water privatisation would deliver higher investment. But a detailed analysis by the public service union Unison found that, between 1990 and 2023, there was no net investment at all. “Investors” spent £3.6bn buying shares in 1989 and 1990, but by March 2023 total shareholder equity across the water sector amounted to £3.4bn. In real terms (taking inflation into account), that means a 60% reduction in shareholder capital.

Over that period, shareholders managed to extract £77.6bn (in 2023 prices) in dividends from the water companies. Add this to the withdrawal of equity, and you discover that they have squeezed £82.4bn out of public assets. Much of this money was obtained through loading the companies with debt. Instead of borrowing to pay for infrastructure improvement, water companies borrowed to pay for dividends. They knew that if the enterprise one day became insolvent as a result, it would be someone else’s problem. Ultimately, as we now discover in the case of Thames Water, it becomes our problem. Just as the water companies dump their sewage in the rivers, they have also dumped their liabilities on the public. The country becomes their dustbin.

For 36 years, these companies have acted as dispensers of free money to their owners, most of which are foreign, some of which are foreign states. In fact, the only government not permitted to own England’s water supply is the UK’s. They must see us as total suckers, giving away our national infrastructure, land and assets … for less than nothing.

Any investments have been funded not by shareholders but by their customers, through our water bills. These rose in the same period by 360%, more than twice the general rate of inflation. The rise has since accelerated. Every year, we pay £2.3bn more for our water and sewerage bills than we would if the suppliers were publicly owned, according to research by the University of Greenwich. High bills, impossible debts, filthy rivers, minimal investment and no resilience: that is the gift of privatisation.

One of the results of this asset-stripping model is that leakage rates remain disgracefully high. While the hosepipe bans now being introduced around the nation are likely to save between 3% and 7% of the water we would otherwise use, 19% of the water piped through the network is lost through leakage. Compare this with the publicly owned Dutch system, which loses 4%. For the same reason, no major reservoir has been completed here since 1992... Article

It was called poverty, the electric water heater was only switched on once a week any other day you boiled a kettle or washed with cold water; my parents gen recall having a tin bath in front of the coal fire when they were young what fun that must have been heating water for a bath on the gas stove.

Not entirely. My grandparents were working-class and so saving money explains their frugality, but my parents were middle-class professionals and they were not inclined to waste water either. At the state school I attended in the 1980s showering once a week was seen as acceptable in some circles and iffy in others, but no one I met felt the need to do it every day.

 

[Hagar]

To be fair government and facility owners did not invest very much prior to privatisation. There were hundreds of operators not all government or local authorities.

 

[gary996]

My water bill is just guessed. Been told they cant fit a water meter as its joined to next door who are on a meter

 

[ttaskmaster]

There was an interesting article published about this today by George Monbiot:

It's a bit of a skewed article. The guy interprets the statistics to suggest an awful lot - Playing the tune of net investment, as if there's been no investment at all, for example.
"Margaret Thatcher promised that water privatisation would deliver higher investment"... and it did - I personally oversaw a £330 million investment in flooding alleviation schemes from 2004 onwards and there were plenty of other similar investment schemes at that time. They're the reason why a lot of stuff still works.
What he means is that the comparatively recent period of financial extraction by unscrupulous and unregulated owners has wiped out the previous decades of investment... but that doesn't mean there has been no investment at all.

Privatisation did work and it did deliver, back when the regulators actually did their jobs.

 

[Maple Leaf]

Privatisation did work and it did deliver, back when the regulators actually did their jobs.

He does criticise the regulators too:

...As for the regulators, they too are useless by design. Ofwat, which is meant to protect the public interest, has succumbed to full-scale regulatory capture, as senior staff circulate between the water companies and the agency supposed to hold them to account. The Environment Agency, chronically underfunded and demotivated, almost halved its water use inspections in the five years to 2023: a classic example of deregulation by stealth. The rules might remain on the statute book, but without monitoring and enforcement they might as well have been deleted... Article

 

[ttaskmaster]

He does criticise the regulators too:

Again, back when they did their jobs, it was working...

Ofwat, which is meant to protect the public interest, has succumbed to full-scale regulatory capture, as senior staff circulate between the water companies and the agency supposed to hold them to account.

The insinuation being that the water industry circulators are the ones who let all this slide...
However, I have two questions regarding that:-

1/. What good is having a regulator without staff who actually understand the industry they're regulating, and if such staff are necessary (which they obviously are) where else are they supposed to come from?

2/. If the ex-industry staff are supposedly to blame, then WTF were they also restricting the amount water companies were allowed to invest? Surely that investment would generate returns and increase the company value, meaning even more money for whoever was looking to skim it?

 

[Caracus2k]

The new build issue with both Solar Panels and grey water could be fixed tomorrow by the government simply demanding both for building regs compliance, this would drive up sales in both sectors and inevitably reduce costs. They should also insist that all new build properties are correctly orientated to maximise solar gains.

No, there's already too much stupid stuff in the planning system and building regs in this country.

The UK is very poorly suited for mass solar deployment and grey water recover is an expensive waste of time. I know because I looked into it when I was getting a house completely gutted a not far of rebuilt (as in new outer brick walls, roof, plumbing, electricity etc) The payback period for grey water systems isn't there, it adds unnecessary complication and risk of failure to the system and 'saves' a trivial amount of water. Stick to an old school water butt that you use for watering your plants if you want to utilise 'grey' water.

Time to slash the building regs and the planning system not to pad them out even more with nonsense

https://twitter.com/x/status/1946224657721438240

 

[dowie]

It seems that the convenient answer for everyone is that it’s the greedy water companies fault and I totally agree they need to take their share of the blame for leaky pipes and lack of obviously needed infrastructure investment, but water consumption in the UK is spiralling. [...] The consumer needs to take a share of the responsibility here the level of water wastage is shocking.

Consumption increasing doesn't imply people are being wasteful, and frankly, on an island where it rains frequently, there is no good excuse for having to introduce nonsense like surge pricing for water, a resource that literally falls from the sky and can be treated and piped to us very easily.

Ultimately, this is a failure of successive governments to allow for the building of more reservoir capacity - Thames Water has tried to build a reservoir in Oxfordshire for years now, and finally is likely to build one by 2040...

This is an entirely artificial problem caused again by nonsense bureaucracy and red tape - see also bat tunnels and the insanity that has taken place while simply trying to get a new bridge built across the lower Thames for the past 16 years (the bill is over 1 billion now).

 

[ttaskmaster]

Consumption increasing doesn't imply people are being wasteful, and frankly, on an island where it rains frequently, there is no good excuse for having to introduce nonsense like surge pricing for water, a resource that literally falls from the sky and can be treated and piped to us very easily.

Most of that rain tends to be sudden downpours of short duration, which looks like a lot when you measure it, but most of it runs off instead of soaking into the ground and filling up the reservoirs properly. You want that famous English heavy drizzle for an extended period to properly bring levels back up.
You then have the limitation that there's only the capacity to treat so much water at a time. The treatment itself is easily done, yes, but meeting the demand without spending a fortune on new infrastucture is getting harder and more expensive.

 

[a1ex2001]

No, there's already too much stupid stuff in the planning system and building regs in this country.

The UK is very poorly suited for mass solar deployment and grey water recover is an expensive waste of time. I know because I looked into it when I was getting a house completely gutted a not far of rebuilt (as in new outer brick walls, roof, plumbing, electricity etc) The payback period for grey water systems isn't there, it adds unnecessary complication and risk of failure to the system and 'saves' a trivial amount of water. Stick to an old school water butt that you use for watering your plants if you want to utilise 'grey' water.

Time to slash the building regs and the planning system not to pad them out even more with nonsense

https://twitter.com/x/status/1946224657721438240

I have no idea why you think the UK isn’t suitable for mass domestic solar generation, yes it’s not for every existing house but it is frankly criminal that we allow new builds to be built without solar and in the wrong orientation to add it. There is no ‘pay back time’ for adding grey water systems to new builds so I have no idea what you mean?

I agree building regs and planning need reform but comparing some odd window bars situation with mandating solar panels is silly and I’m not sure your choice of person to quote on the matter is all that independent and reliable!

 

[a1ex2001]

Consumption increasing doesn't imply people are being wasteful, and frankly, on an island where it rains frequently, there is no good excuse for having to introduce nonsense like surge pricing for water, a resource that literally falls from the sky and can be treated and piped to us very easily.

Ultimately, this is a failure of successive governments to allow for the building of more reservoir capacity - Thames Water has tried to build a reservoir in Oxfordshire for years now, and finally is likely to build one by 2040...

This is an entirely artificial problem caused again by nonsense bureaucracy and red tape - see also bat tunnels and the insanity that has taken place while simply trying to get a new bridge built across the lower Thames for the past 16 years (the bill is over 1 billion now).

Consumption per person imcreasing significantly year on year wether you consider it waste of not is a serious issue for the uk water system. Water usage per person is up 70% in the last 40 years which combined with with a growing population makes just building more reservoirs problematic as a sole solution.

I agree that surge pricing for water is utter nonsense but that still doesn’t absolve the consumer of responsibility for their consumption and when most Brits have no concept of how much they use how can they possibly know if they are being responsible?

Around 10% (increasing significantly year on year) of uk drinking water is sprayed on domestic gardens which is a warming world is madness. A third of our drinking water gets flushed straight down the toilet which again is bonkers.

 

[dowie]

I agree that surge pricing for water is utter nonsense but that still doesn’t absolve the consumer of responsibility for their consumption and when most Brits have no concept of how much they use how can they possibly know if they are being responsible?

That's entirely subjective, though, and frankly, unless they're actually wasting water/leaving taps running, etc, or actively defying things like hosepipe bans, then I don't really see it. The issue is a lack of infrastructure, not a lack of water in an island nation with plenty of rainfall.

Around 10% (increasing significantly year on year) of uk drinking water is sprayed on domestic gardens which is a warming world is madness. A third of our drinking water gets flushed straight down the toilet which again is bonkers.

Why is maintaining a garden madness in a warming world? Much better than paving or tarmacking over it or indeed putting down fake grass.

As for flushing "drinking water" down the toilet, why is that bonkers? It's not like people have two different water supplies, the water supplied to people's homes isn't only for drinking, it's for washing and indeed flushing toilets - if you think flushing toilets is wasting water, then I'd certainly disagree if that's included in what you'd deem to be irresponsible behaviours.

What are people supposed to do instead - go full hippie and get a composting toilet? Or do the eco-warrior stuff like not flushing after peeing/flushing for no2s only or putting a brick in the cistern to reduce the flush? We shoudn't need to live like that - it's completely ridiculous that succesive governments haven't allowed for basic infrastructure investment while the population has carried on increasing.