Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Our site pays rates to UU as well but I have not heard it mentioned at monthly meetings.
I have printed off your post and it certainly will be at the next!
If this utility Co. gets away with it, all the others will follow suit.
Thanks again Bob.
Yes, I've researched a little bit more and the implications are extremely worrying. A local Cricket Club have had water charges for this year totalling over £4000, rather than a few hundred last year. Which is serious enough. However, what the chap I spoke to hasn't realised is that this is only a phasing-in of the new charge, and only represents a third of the change. This year (Apr 09 - 10) will be charged at two-thirds and from April 2010 they will be on the full charge. I'm not sure what site band they are in, but it sounds like it could be around Band 6 or 7 (charged by 2010 at £2867 or £5448 pa for Highway drainage alone). This club has existed for over a century and yet is now severely struggling to pay this charge (on top of all others), and may indeed be forced to close if this situation persists. Cricket Clubs suffer enough from rain as it is (abandoned matches, etc). To now be faced with having to pay heavily for this 'privelege' is ludicrous. This is REAL, it's happening right now. Everyone needs to check it out - quickly - and add their voice to the concerns.
It's quite alarming that nobody seems to be aware of it or understands it. No-one I have spoken to has any literature about it. I however have a booklet from UU which they did send to our allotment group, so the literature is out there, but doesn't seem to have been distributed very much..........hmm. All the info and costs are however on the UU website.
A local school (I know the secretary) has been placed in Band 6. Their transitional (one third) cost for this year is £1911 (plus 2/3 of the old rateable-value charge) just for Highway Drainage, to rise to £2867 in 2010. Add to this the fact they're also liable for the other 50% component - Surface Water - and by 2010 this school alone will be paying £5735 just for rainfall. That's a lot of money just for rain falling out of the sky - a lot of books, etc.
The allotment site I mentioned in the next town is the most worrying. They have 144 plots (which startled me, though I knew it was a large site) each at approx 70 x 70 feet each, so 4900 sq ft per plot. Multiplied by 144 gives a total area of 705,600 sq ft, which by further calculation equals over 65,000 sq metres. This will place their site in Band 11. The total Highway Drainage cost by 2010 for Band 11 is to be £35, 843. Every plot on this site has pathways in between each plot, some of them broad enough for a vehicle. I don't know the area taken up by these paths and the boundary surrounds, etc, but in total they may easily add enough area to the site to bring it into Band 12 (over 75,000 sq m), which will then incur a drainage charge of £50, 180 pa. Put another way, that will be just short of £350 pa for every plot holder, just for rainfall on the roads and streets (which are actually nothing to do with allotments)
The unfairness of it all is obvious. If you are a large site you could incur costs of tens of £000s, equalling several hundred quid each. A smaller site, whilst still bad enough, would be liable for hundreds of ££s and so 'only' each liable for say £17 (our site @ £272 divided by 16 plots). A doubling and trebling of site area doesn't double or treble the cost (bad enough) - the leaps in charge from Band to Band are quite staggering.
Apparently, articles about it have recently appeared in The Telegraph and The Times, and I've heard it has been 'mentioned' in Parliament. Mentioned but not acted upon. Inevitably the Gov't have known about this and must have sanctioned it, so in response to contacting one's MP................. :?
What's galling even more so is that the Water Authorities have spent some time concocting this scheme, and have decided it is 'fairer' than the old rateable value scheme. Fairer if you're affluent and have a high-value property that is - crushing if you have a low-value or non-profit site. After much consultation (costing possibly millions), they have submitted this idea and Ofwat (another expensive quango) have agreed it. How come none of these august and well-paid people have never seen the anomaly that takes 15 minutes to realise, once you start to think about it? Amateur sports clubs, allotments, Scouts, community premises, etc, etc, not to mention schools - and hospitals. The latter two get paid out of a budget of public funds and because no private individual is liable, no-one seems to care - or rather to notice.
Because this scheme hasn't been instituted for residential properties, all householders in the land haven't noticed it, despite their own water charges maybe having risen alarmingly over recent years. If only people were aware of what's going on behind the scenes. Still, don't hold your breath, cos I can see this scheme, if it persists, being hailed a success in a few years and the same criteria then applied to residential properties too.
Because Ofwat are involved I would think a similar scheme has been applied across the country. One water authority isn't going to sit by with some cosy old arrangement whilst their neighbouring authority charges millions. In any case, I've heard that Yorkshire Water and Severn-Trent Water are applying the same.
A couple of other points to note: Last year Utd Utilties made a profit of.....wait for it........ £1.34 million - per day! Are not most of our water Authorities (private companies with shareholders) now actually owned by foreign companies? All our water suppliers, unlike other utility companies, have a monopoly. We can't opt for change to seek a better deal (though they're all the same when it comes down to it).
I think that this situation could be the most
serious threat to allotment sites, above all others. Poisoned manure or the lack of available land or pressure from housing projects will pale into insignificance compared to water bills of possibly tens of £1000s. This sounds alarmist but I've seen our site bill, have spoken to a local school and a local sports club - and they have confirmed my worst fears. As I said, this is REAL. The cricket club have already received red letters and threats of legal action in connection with overdue four-figure sums.
Looked at overall I perceive this: The authorities now know that rainfall in this country is a problem. Look at the huge flooding of areas in our last 2 wet summers. They know that this problem is likely to increase - all climate-change predictions say that foremost we will become much WETTER as much as warmer. In addition they have/are/will continue to build on flood plains, thus increasing the drainage problem. Certain areas have had to have compensation awarded by the gov't (though doubtless insufficient and long-awaited) and in addition cannot now get insurance against flooding. All this is COST and a social burden, and the authorities have decided it will have to be paid for.........and that we're the ones to do the paying. The gov't will have been quietly complicit in all of this, but have allowed the water authorities to do the actual charging, so distancing themselves from accusations. This 'Rainfall Tax' or 'Drainage Tax' is quite possibly the worst Stealth Tax yet concocted, and could well the the 'death' of us all. Just think - paying a heavy tax, all because it rains a lot. It sounds ridiculous - but it's true.
Visit the UU website and look for links relating to Non-Metered Sewage Charges, Highway drainage, Surface Water. You may have to go into the section relating to Business customers (meaning non-res, not just business & commercial - crafty of them to insinuate it's just businesses), rather then Domestic customers. All the horrors of this new charge are there if you look closely enough.
A final thought: All these charges I've quoted won't of course ever go down. They will only ever rise and probably regularly. Still, £5k, £30k, £50k - who's bothered if they rise 10% next year - we'll already be dead and buried.
And think if you're in Band 15, over 150,000 sq metres, admittedly a large site. The Rainfall charge (Highway Drainage and Surface Water @ 50% each) totals £162, 893 by 2010 - admittedly a large number. Even if such a site (and all others) is a business, is it fair that a charge of this magnitude should be applied just because it rains a lot? Businesses will have no option but to pass on these charges, thus meaning that we will all be paying for it in a roundabout way eventually.
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June 18, 2013, 23:10