Water Rates Rebate?

Nah we will get a surcharge. The poor, hard done by water company have to deal with the drainage of the rain (using Victorian pipes that were installed 200 years ago) so they will now feel that they are due extra money...

 

What are water rates?

 

Rates………for water

 

Ah, don’t pay the water board here on a shared system, can’t be cut off as it’s a shared main tapped into 6 houses.

 

You must be paying something DS surely ?

 

Nope, not paid in 20 years.

 

You sir, are my hero

 

we dont pay water rates, we have a private water supply. i say private but we share it with every species that live on the hills behind me.
tasty. nom nom.

 

iirc even if you’re not on the mains in England you still are required to pay ‘water rates’.

 

bummer.

 

I think that would only be the case if you have mains drainage - domestic water charges are partly for the supply of fresh water (I can't see how that could cost anything if it's not supplied) and partly for taking away waste. If there's a septic tank or cess pit and no drainage to water company pipes, I'd have though they can't charge for drainage either.

Disregarding the question of ownership (which has always been complex - for instance Bristol has had water supplied by a private company for ages; long before privatisation, which only changed the ownership of the drainage side), it's anomalous that we don't have universal metering (bearing in mind that water supply is a major consumer of electricity, it seems bizarre in this day and age to supply to some people on an "eat as much as you like buffet" basis). This also means that everyone who doesn't have a meter has to be charged using the old "water rates" system, based on property "rateable values" which stopped being maintained in the 1980s I think - eventually replaced by council tax, but the council tax bands are separate and not used for water charging!

Then there's Northern Ireland - completely different because the water is supplied by a state-owned company, and charging is included in "rates" paid to local authorities (still rates because no council tax in NI!).

 

iirc it not because of the draining away you’re rated/taxed it’s as you’re collecting it not because it’s draining away.
It goes if I remember correctly that you collect it as it falls on your property not the the water companies provided a means of drainage. Could well be I don’t recall it as well as I might due to it being a in passing read around 20 years ago from a non motorcycling forum.