Kitchen Garden Forum

Suggest you all check the small print on the back of your water bills. (We're with Thames Water). There's a clause under "How we work out your bill" which says: "Fixed charges - "These are annual charges payable for water and wastewater service provided and include the costs for surface and highway drainage. If surface water from your property does not drain to our sewers you may be able to claim a reduction of £17.50 for the bill. Please call us on our drainage line ******* for further details."
We then realised we do not have any street drains in our road and that rainfall on our roof drains straight down into the ground into soakaways.
We contacted the Water Board who have confirmed that we are entitled to the annual refund although they won't backdate it for the 25 years we've lived here.

If you don't have any highway drains in your street OR your rainwater drainpipes go straight down into a soakaway in the ground, you may want to contact your own Water Board in case they offer a similar rebate. Have your account number ready when you phone.

Primrose, you are quite right. The only reason I know this is because 'elderly next door' told me exactly the same about a year ago. All rainwater from his gutters etc etc are channelled into an underground water reservoir, and he is therefore eligible for this refund, and gets it...
Nice when it works, eh?!

I am already aware of this one. Do you know the extent of the rebate?
What is to me of much greater importance now I have gon onto metered use is the fact that for every unit if water I pay a water charge, but also over twice as much as a sewerage charge. This assumes that all the water that i purchase ends up as sewage which is not true, it ignores the fact that quite a lot of water is dispersed in the garden including watering the plants raised here fir use at the farm. I shall counter this by using as much rainwater as possible to supply the WCs. I now have a collecting system that receives rainwater from the house roof and greenhouse and outbuildings, in due course any surplus will flush one loo.