Water bill

We just got our water bill booklet in the mail today and I was shocked at how much it is.  This is what it says on the first page:

December 10-March 31, 2009
Water Standing Charge: 10.54
Water Supply 39.90
Surface Drainage and Sewerage Standing Charge 11.93
Sewerage 44.19

April 1-March 31, 2010
Water Standing Charge 35.80
Water Supply 135.45
Surface Drainage ... 41.46
Sewerage 154.60

Total: £473.xx

Then each page of the booklet has the monthly bills and they're all for £59.20.  This seems incredibly high!  We paid about $12/month for water and sewage in America!  Would anyone be willing to share what they pay monthly for their water?  Or give any insight about why it's this high?  Thanks!

Edit: for what it's worth, it's me, my husband, and our two young children.  We don't water the yard (we have no grass!).  I do laundry once a day, dishes once a day by hand, and the kids get baths once a week.

Our's is billed & paid semiannually.

Dec '08 £278.40 (27/05/08-17/11/08)

Mind you this is for a 1 bed flat with myself, DH & DD who has just turned 1. So using the last bill divided by 6 our bill would be £46.40/month. We should be getting a new one in the next month or so

$12 month for water and sewer? Lucky.  We pay $25/mo for sewer services, and usually under $5 for water on top of that. 

I'm incredibly frugal (or as my husband likes to put it-- you could peel an orange in my pocket, which I guess is an expression to mean I'm cheap?  hehe) so low bills are my goal!  I'm forever turning off lights and shutting off sinks behind my husband.

I never paid for water or sewer in the US. My house had a well and a septic tank, and when I moved to the Bay Area it was included in the rent. So I can't do a comparison.

do you guys have a water meter?  We don't so we pay a flat rate based on the house's "rateable value" (the assessment of the annual rental value as of 1973) which works out to £20/month for our 2-bed terraced house. A lot of houses here actually don't have meters and pay the flat rate no matter how much water they use.

I don't think so-- it doesn't mention it on the bill and I haven't seen one in the house, so I applied for one online.  I'm 99% sure we use significantly less than whatever the standard flat rate would be, so hopefully we'll get that and have a lower bill.

I don't think so-- it doesn't mention it on the bill and I haven't seen one in the house, so I applied for one online.  I'm 99% sure we use significantly less than whatever the standard flat rate would be, so hopefully we'll get that and have a lower bill.

If you get a water meter installed, you probably will have a lower bill! But right now they have no way of knowing how much water you use so you'd have to pay the flat rate until you get the meter in.

That's what I'm hoping!  They actually just rang me to make an appointment, but it's not available till the first week of July!  Oh well, we'll just have to suck it up until then.

I'm incredibly frugal (or as my husband likes to put it-- you could peel an orange in my pocket, which I guess is an expression to mean I'm cheap?  hehe) so low bills are my goal!  I'm forever turning off lights and shutting off sinks behind my husband.

Oh, me too.  But where my mom lives there's a flat rate for the sewer on top of the regular water bill. Pain in the butt.

But...on the positive side water rates are part of the deductible foreign housing costs on the Form 2555 you file with your US tax return each year, so you'll get a tiny tax break in the States for what you end up paying in the UK!

Last year we paid £325 for the year, so that would be about £27 a month. We live in a 2-bedroom flat. I do laundry once a week,  just for myself and my husband.

We're in a 3 bed terraced and have had a water meter for probably a good 5 years.
Until recently, we've been paying £15 - £17/month over these 5 years but they've just bumped us up to £25/month.  Although we had kid #2 this year so maybe we're using more water.  I thought I heard or read somewhere that water bills are going up across the board this year but didn't catch what the reasons might be.  I need to check the meter against the latest bill to see if they've got the readings right, I'm hopeful that the bill can come down!

We pay roughly £190 p/a. We live out in the sticks and as of yet haven't been put on a water meter. We get an annual bill for the whole amount and then can choose how to pay it (e.g. monthly instalments, quarterly, etc.)

Still on flat-rate service here, provided by Anglian Water.

The current year's bill (April 2009 - March 2010) is made up thus:

Water supply

Rateable value  127 x 41.14p = 52.24
Standing charge                   144.53

Total water                        = £196.77

Sewerage service

Rateable value 127 x 44.00p = 55.88
Standing charge                  139.15

Total sewerage                 = £195.03

So a grand total of £391.80 for this year.  The rates have been increasing quite a bit recently though, e.g. last year (2008/09) it was £367.39 and the previous year (2007/08) was £339.38.

One little-known deduction, probably because it doesn't apply to most people, is that you can have the surface drainage charge waived if no rainwater from your property discharges either directly or indirectly into the sewer.   It's not much, but Anglian Water deducts £30 from the annual bill (that deduction is included in my figures above).