I believe that once a company has put a meter in, it can't be taken out (after the cooling off period). I believe businesses can pick their water supplier, there is currently no competition in the domestic market.
My (water+sewage) bill is about £8 per cu meter (on an annual usage of about 25 cu me per year; one person in one house; Yorkshire) (Last time I checked, about 2016, unmetered was £750/yr, and metered is currently about £200/yr; water+sewerage)
It's 2 years in my case IIRC. After my first year, the annual metered water/sewer bill is about half the unmetered (£200 vs £450). But I don't use much water on the garden, and most of the time it's just me in the house.
As a household of 5, we are probably better off sticking with an unmetered supply. At some point I will get around to fitting my own meter (I have already bought it) inside the house, to see how much we actually use. As the kids leave home, the situation may change.
The annual fixed charge would be £33.71 if they could deal with their own surface water (gutter) drainage and the sewage rate would also drop to 2.7838/m3
They have given you the wrong figures. Water rate is £1.9338/m3 while sewage rate is £3.2938. The latter is always higher than for the actual supply of water, but if they use a lot of water on their garden they should be able to negotiate a discount on sewage, or possibly fit a meter to the garden tap to measure actual outside usage.
Their 6 month bill is £25.07 standing charge, £375 for water and sewage at a combined rate of £5.25/m3. I cannot quickly see the percentage factor used to assess how much supplied water ends up back in the foul sewer (Southern Water assume 92.5%) so I have left it at 100%.
Anyway £373/£5.25 is 71.4 cu metres for 6 months which is many times more than my single person usage, not just about double.
Are they sure that their house gutters are connected to SWW's pipes ?. Investing in a storage tank might be worthwhile. This would reduce their annual bill by about £80 from what I can see.
The water charges also include sewage charges which assumes that a percentage of the supplied water (typically 92.5%) goes back in the foul sewer. Turnip is not on mains sewage so he only pays for water.
It might get back to nature but to come out of your tap (on demand) requires collection, treatment and distribution, fixing leaks etc. Treatment and distribution uses a lot of electricity too, so it's a double hit for people, (and leaks) who waste water
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