United Utilities offers a wide range of payment options to help customers and make it easier for them to pay their bills. One of the easiest ways to pay is by Direct Debit and around 1.7 million customers choose to pay in this way, saving £5 off their annual bill. Customers can also pay by weekly, fortnightly or in monthly instalments using our payment card free of charge at Payzone outlets.
In this current economic climate it is increasingly important for us to address the issue of affordability. For those people who are in arrears, who are on Income Support or Job Seekers Allowance, we can arrange to have their water bill paid directly from their benefit.
We also run an Arrears Allowance Scheme which matches, pound for pound, debt repaid for customers who sign up, and keep to, an easy payment scheme. More than 13,000 people have signed up (a leap from 3,000 last year) - this is a significant rise in customers taking advantage of the scheme.
Our vulnerable customer scheme offers metered household customers, which comply with certain criteria, the option to ask to pay the same as an average household, rather than charges based on water usage. More than 3,000 of our customers are currently charged in this way.
We have long-standing collection agreements with Oldham, Warrington and Rochdale Councils and have recently signed a new five-year agreement with Stockport Council. We understand from discussions with our regulator Ofwat that the newly formed Stockport collection agreement is one of a very few to be signed by the industry in recent years. As part of this agreement, we are trialling a new tariff whereby each tenant receives a £10 discount off their bill. This is to reflect the reduced billing and collection costs that United Utilities now has for the 11,500 customers contained under the agreement.
Last year we invested £3.5 million in our independent charitable trust, helping more than 4,000 customers in dire financial circumstances. Details of the trust fund can be found at http://www.uutf.org.uk/Index.html.
Many people who live on their own or have a small family, and pay their charges on the rateable value, are saving money by switching to a meter. This year we will have installed more than 58,200 meters free of charge, against the year-end target of just over 47,000, making it the most successful year for installations since its introduction in 2000. This rise means that more than 25% of our customers have a meter.
Some customers on low or fixed incomes, for whom a meter is not possible due to the nature of the pipework where they live, for example in sheltered housing or flats, may be eligible for the single person household tariff.
This year we sent letters to just over 20,000 customers who we believed might be eligible for this tariff. Around 8,000 customers have successfully applied and the process was carried out in consultation with the Consumer Council for Water.
The tariff is now part of our normal ‘business as usual’ free meter option process, whereby a customer who applies for a meter but cannot have one fitted is given the option of an assessed charge. One such assessed charge is the single person household tariff. For other customers, the assessed charge is property based.
While many households do benefit from having a water meter, some households face hardship because they need to use large amounts of water for essential purposes. Our WaterSure scheme helps those with a large family or those for whom a medical condition means that they use significant amounts of water. Customers with a water meter who are accepted onto the scheme will have their new charges capped at the same amount as the average household bill. So, even if a lot of water is used, the bill will not be more than that of the average household customer. So far this scheme has helped more than 3,000 customers.