Water bills?

[TheOpalFox]

Severn Trent said my water bills are going uoto £51.
am I better off going on a meter? Or will that work out more expensive please?
thank you
2 bed house £51!!!

Anglian Water, 5 of us with at least one shower a day each, dishwasher and washing machine on twice daily. Metered and its £161 per month!!

The obvious conclusion here is some people are using colossal amounts of water and some people aren't.

AI Overview

The average monthly water bill for a 2-person household in the UK is around £34. For a 1-person household, it's about £24. Individual water bills can vary based on location and water usage, so these are just estimates.

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

1-person household: £24 per month.
2-person household: £34 per month.
3-person household: £44 per month.
4-person household: £51 per month.

What is the average water use?

I think it is about 141 litres per person. Mine last month was 71.

Water costs vary quite a lot by where you live so it doesn't always help to hear what other people pay for a similar size house or number of people.

But overall they are all going up, some by horrendous amounts. It's criminal what water companies are getting away with - the costs vs the actual benefit they bring is a very poor deal indeed, as they all pollute waterways and have systematically failed to invest profits in better infrastructure.

I think the record on this thread is £170 a month.

I'd be digging a reservoir in my back garden if mine cost that much.

Had a bill today. I worked it out that we use about 309 litres per day. 2 adults and 2 children. The bill is £65 per month with united utilities.

I checked at thetime, leccy was priced per kwh onsize of house not amountof usage, so I started at ahuge disadvantage from the get go ,neighbours paidless per kwh ( or whatever itis) I gotnowhere with complaining

Family of 4 in a 3 bed house in Cornwall - £30/month on a meter, previous house, off meter was £750 a year and that was 4 years ago before the silly price hikes that have hit this year.

Ok two people

weekly usage

2showers per week each so 4 x 7 min showers in total

2 x washloads per week

washing up once every evening by hand half a bowl hot and about 5 mins quick rinsing
small amount used to drink, cook

No garden watering or car cleaning

This years bill foryear 793 gbp welsh water

online check meter would be over 1K gbp same usage

Last years bill was 568

Criminal pricing I literally HAVEto skip meals nowandstill cannot keepupwith all the rises

Yorkshire Water metered (read remotely), charged quarterly on receipt of bill. At new rates since April 2025. Standing charges £26/quarter + usage £37/quarter which is equivalent to £21/month.

BTW, the highest use of water by far is the flushing the toilet!

Jesus that's ridiculous.

We've got our water bill fixed at £5 per month forever thanks to Step Change helping my DH to negotiate with Wessex Water just before I met him. Might be worth a chat with them?

That cannot be correct. Everyone has an electric meter, which records their usage. No one pays electricity bills based on the size of their home.

Maybe what you read or were told was ‘an average 3 bed property uses x amount of electricity’, purely as a guide.

The price per kWh can be variable - some people have a lower overnight rate, but a higher daytime rate, and prices can vary slightly between different suppliers.

I don't know. I signed up to a new supplier recently and they tried to base my tariff on people and house size. I am alone in a 3 bed. Was a battle to get them to reduce my tariff to one that made sense for my situation.

Household of five, three adults two kids, we run dishwasher twice a day, washing machine at least once a day, and water our garden regularly as we grow veg. On Severn trent, metered, we pay £65 a month .

I agree with PP that they seem to just pluck a price out of the air for every house.

We're unmetered, so we pay based on the rateable value, as does my MIL. Similar-sized houses on comparable roads, three minutes apart. Her bill is slightly over double what ours is?!?!?!

I know the 'received wisdom' is to get a meter, but even from this thread, it sounds like the charges are quite random, whether you have a meter or not.

My concerns about getting a meter are twofold. Firstly, if a hidden leak sprang within our perimeter, we could end up paying an absolute fortune; and what incentive would there be to the water company to fix it?!

Secondly, call me a conspiracy theorist, but I wonder more about what could happen in the near future rather than necessarily how it is right now. Once everybody is on a meter - either forced or encouraged by talk of big savings - there's absolutely no reason for the sayer companies not to ramp the prices right up.

Think how much more efficient ICE car engines are now than 20 years ago, and how much less fuel they use overall. It should be loads cheaper to buy the fuel now than it was then; but it isn't! Millions of people were encouraged to invest in electric cars - partly based on the promise of zero-rated VED to offset the higher purchase costs. That's now been scrapped.

Companies seem to start with an idea of the highest amount of money that they can get from consumers, and then work backwards in their pricing per unit calculations to make sure that people end up paying that amount regardless - all the while being nagged to use less and less, but still with ever increasing bills.

I pay £80 per month and am in London 2 bed flat. I have a garden and water it so that put me off having a meter.

I’m hoping Thames goes under, it can’t gat any worse

United utilities, NW, about £32pm
the bill says I use the exact average amount for 1 person
no dishwasher

Neighbours same suplier same service no special night rates they were hoping mine would be cheaper than theirs hence we were chatting

Water meters work if you live alone or just two of you, if you have a family don't bother will probably cost you more, have any in your family have health issue or get benefits, if you contact water company you can get your bills capped, a family member of mine has water bills capped at 136.00 pounds a year.

I think I may be the winner.
I’m with south west water & my water bill is £174.59 a month!!! 😳

Same here 2 bed house, went on to a meter a couple of months ago- bill now £18 a month. Wish I’d done it ages ago!

Wasn’t Utility Warehouse was it? They use strange ways to determine your monthly DD payment (and then tell customers that they have unlimited usage for that fixed price - they really don’t and people end up in serious debt because of it!) rattan than asking what your usage was for the previous 12 months which is a much better guesstimate of predicting future usage!

If the leak is within the perimeter of your property the. It’s the owner’s responsibility to repair the leak not the water company therefore having a meter makes no difference. We recently had a leak meaning our usage for 6 months was the same as the previous 2 1/2 years; once it was repaired by our landlords insurance company, we had to take readings for 3 weeks and then they calculated what we would have used if the leak hadn’t happened. It worked out to be 1m3 more than the other bills so their formula for it is pretty accurate. They then reduced our bill to what it would have been if we had used the recalculated amount of water.

Hi OP, my bill also went up to £60 per month. I contacted them and explained it was too much and unaffordable. Its just me and 2 girls. It's now been reduced to £35. I am sure if you speak with them, they may be able to assist in some way. Hope this helps x

It's interesting (and good news) how a number of people have reported that, after telling the water companies that they simply can't afford to pay the price asked, they've had it significantly reduced.

It does rather make it look like they demand what they think they can get away with, but it's all quite arbitrary, really.

I can't believe that, in one of the richest countries in the world, in 2025, lots of people are potentially priced out of being able to afford water in their homes.

Can somebody please remind me exactly why the government ever thought it was a good idea that private monopoly companies should be able to cash in and heavily profit from ordinary people's need for such a basic essential of life?