The company confirmed they have agreed the bill increases negotiated with regulator Ofwat last year
Water company United Utilities has confirmed bills will rise by 32 per cent over the coming five years.
The Warrington-headquartered company serves about seven million customers across Greater Manchester and Liverpool and said they had agreed the bill increases negotiated with regulator Ofwat last year.
The company had the option of appealing Ofwat’s decision, made in December last year, to the competition regulator, but announcements on Wednesday signal it will not.
United Utilities said the increase would help improve water quality, reduce storm overflow spills by 60 per cent and provide millions of pounds more to support households with their bills.
The regulator’s decision means the typical billpayer across the UK will see their payments rise by an average of £86 this April – and was met with outrage from consumer groups. The increases come amid high levels of sewage spills and underinvestment in pipes, sewers and reservoirs over the last decade.
United Utilities and South West Water, which has also said it will hike bills, have said they need to increase bills to pay for improvements to their infrastructure to reduce pollution incidents. UU boss Louise Beardmore said the rise in bills would raise £13 billion to invest in its infrastructure across the North West.
She said the total was the ‘largest investment in water and wastewater infrastructure in over 100 years’.
The Environment Agency, meanwhile, working closely with Natural England, said it has secured the largest ever commitment from water companies to clean up the environment and invest in new infrastructure since privatisation.
The Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP) sets out over 24,000 actions water companies must take over the next five years to meet their legal requirements for the environment.
It represents a £22.1bn investment in the environment – four times more than was secured in the last Price Review – and will deliver tangible benefits for our water system and for customers.
It will bring a ‘significant scheme’ to upgrade a large wastewater treatment works in the River Mersey catchment in Greater Manchester and into Cheshire and Merseyside, leading to better water quality, it was said.
South West Water, meanwhile, has confirmed bill increases of 23 per cent. South West Water’’s parent company Pennon also said they had agreed the bill increases negotiated with regulator Ofwat last year.