Legal/moral dilema with water bill ..

[MillieMummy]

Anyone able to advise where we stand legally with the following dilema.

We moved into a brand new house 8 yrs ago - a small development of houses. All the houses have water meters, we have been paying our bill via direct debit for 8 yrs. Have always thought that our bill was very low, lower than my parents' bill; two of them in the house compaired to 4 of us.

Have just found out that the bill we have ben paying is not for our meter, we are paying one of our neighbours bills and they must be paying ours - we don't know which neighbour though as 7 to choose from.

Would the water company or our neighbour be able to claim back from us - we have clearly been underpaying for 8 yrs?

I don't think you can be made to pay back because you paid in good faith (didn't you?) what you thought was your bill. Not your fault presumably that you have been paying wrong, too late for them to ask for it back now.
I think it's up to the water company to sort it and refund the other folk who have paid too much.
But I could be wong...lol!

How did you find out?

I think you may have to pay back some of it but only the last year according to an article in the times on saturday

How did we find out; long story but in short a leak has been detected which water people thought was us. When they turned up today the guy checked and noticed that when we turned our water on and offn 'our' meter wasn't moving.

On the one hand I don't like the idea that someone else is out of pocket due to paying our bil, but I don't want to have to pay back 8 yrs worth.

If you don't have to pay it back it doesn't mean the other family won't be refunded though, they will have their rights as well.

I think it would depend on who made the initial mistake in the allocation of water meter number to property - this is not an unusual situation as when the water meters are put in they are usually allocated to plot numbers and then the house number is different to the plot number when the build is complete.

If you still have the original paperwork from the builders (NHBC etc) it might note the water meter number for your plot.

I once dealt with 2 brothers who moved into new semi-detached houses next door to each other - and ended up paying each others mortgages for over 10 years - now that was a hard one to unravel!!