Households are being (Image: Getty)
UK households will face water rationing within years despite huge increases which have been announced for .
The Environment Secretary has warned that rationing will hit the UK’s water supply within 15 years, even though regulator Ofwat has just announced five years of annual price rises.
Households in England and Wales will see their water bills increase by an average of £86 next year alone, as firms faced accusations of years of under-investment in their crumbling infrastructure.
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Regulator Ofwat said it will allow companies to raise average bills by £31 a year, or £157 in total, over the next five years to £597 by 2030 to help finance a £104 billion upgrade for the sector.
That represents a 36% increase before , which will then be added on top.
However, despite the average £31 a year increase, households will be hit particularly hard from April with an average hike of £86 or 20% front-loaded into the coming year, with smaller percentage increases in each of the next four years.
Environment Secretary Steve Reed issued a warning that within the next 15 years demand for clean drinking water will outstrip supply, even though bills are skyrocketing.
Writing in , he said: “Demand for clean drinking water will outstrip supply, leaving parts of the country facing water rationing unless things change.
“The public is right to be angry. Tory recklessness has caused untold damage.”
Tom MacInnes, director of policy at Citizens Advice, said the price rises will “hit many households hard”.
Friends of the Earth accused Ofwat of “caving to pressure” from firms, leaving customers to “pick up the tab for decades of under-investment in our crumbling water infrastructure”.
Sienna Somers, senior nature campaigner at the organisation, said: “Dirty water companies shouldn’t be able to rely on their customers to foot ever higher bills while they line the pockets of their shareholders and leave our rivers brimming with sewage.
“These extortionate price rises won’t guarantee us cleaner water or solve the sewage crisis, they simply reward businesses for breaking the rules that protect people and nature. That’s why now more than ever, we need the human right to a healthy environment enshrined in law, so that communities can hold water companies to account.”
The confirmed increase to bills is significantly higher than the 21%, or £19 a year, rise per household, outlined in the regulator’s draft proposals in July.
The UK is one of only three countries in the world which has privatised water. The UK, Chile, and some cities in the US have private water supply. In the rest of the world and the rest of the US, water is publicly owned.
In the past 10 years, 180 cities in 35 countries have returned water to public ownership.