Water Bill Boycott
KENT BARKER
A campaign is growing for Hastings residents to join a boycott of payments to Southern Water. Organisations like Boycott Water Bills, Don’t Pay for Dirty Water and Extinction Rebellion have been urging consumers to withhold part of their water bill in protest at deliberate sewage releases into rivers and the sea.
A local online campaign is urging people in the Hastings area to join the boycott. “My bill has just gone up from £36 a month to £114” said A.L. on Facebook, “That’s an increase of more than £1,300 a year. It’s bad enough that they are polluting the sea, but we pay them over the odds to be an irresponsible provider.”
Another person posted: “Our (bill) went from £36 to £59 to £89 a month pretty quick.” The sharp rises seem to be a common theme among those complaining, with many saying their bills have doubled in recent months despite their using no additional water. The water utility company has faced record fines – £90 million in 2021 – and has paid huge sums in compensation for disruptions to supplies over the past few years. People on social media sites believe they are recouping the money through higher bills to consumers.
BoycottWaterBills.com says it is a group of individuals who have had enough of “paying water companies to pollute our waterways and seas – so we stopped paying.”` They claim that on average raw sewage entered rivers and seas in England and Wales more than 800 times every day last year. And they point out that as the water companies are monopolies, consumers are unable to choose any competitor. “What else can we do except stop paying for the wastewater treatment part of our bills?” they ask.
One Hastings resident involved in the local campaign says: “I’ve refused to pay the wastewater part of my bill since may last year. I still pay for the water I actually receive which is about £17 a month,” posts FB. “They referred me to debt recovery, but I’ve held firm and shown them that I am paying for the (part of the) service that is actually being delivered. Eventually they stop pursuing it.”
Last year the pressure group Surfers against Sewage carried out a poll which showed that 27% of consumers – more than one in four – had considered not paying or withholding part of their bill. They do not directly advocate withholding bill payments, preferring instead to campaign for reform of the water industry through petitions. They point out that in a recent year water companies paid out £1.4bn to shareholders, all whilst dumping raw sewage into “our rivers and seas” for 1.75 million hours – or 825 times a day on average.
HIP contacted Southern Water to ask how many enforcement actions they had taken in the past year but was told they did not have the precise figures to hand. However, parliamentary data reveals Southern Water is one of the most prolific users of debt enforcement agents in England and instructed bailiffs over 4,000 times in the most recent year for which figures were recorded.
Southern Water is deeply unpopular in parts of Hastings following floods in the town centre, long periods without water for some customers, and the massive plastic bead pollution of Camber Sands and the local coastline after illegal releases at an Eastbourne water treatment plant. It remains to be seen if the increases consumers are experiencing in their water bills will prompt many more to withhold payments.
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