Affinity Water has identified 650,000 people to contact with offers of financial support this month as the cost of living crisis threatens to leave more households struggling to pay water bills.
The company has now moved 93,000 customers to its low-income tariff and added 105,000 households to the priority services register (PSR). Since 2020, the company has granted 7,896 payment breaks of up to three months to aid customers who experience temporary financial vulnerability.
Affinity said its “We’re here to help” campaign will urge customers to get in touch, rather than struggling in silence.
“We know that households are facing a tough time now and under pressure to make ends meet so we wanted to reach out to them and encourage them to contact us if they are worried about paying their bills,” said Affinity’s head of financial support and service delivery James Tipler.
He explained the emails set out payment plan options with video links explaining how to access help.
“It’s important that they contact us sooner rather than later and we are asking the media to help us point them in the right direction,” Tipler added.
Households with an income under £16,480 or in receipt of certain benefits will be eligible for a reduced, fixed-tariff water bill.
SOS – Save Our Streams
This week it launched the second year of its efficiency campaign, with the aim of helping consumers save money on both water and energy bills by consuming less.
The Save Our Streams (SOS) initiative is designed to help people make sustainable changes to use less water. The company has a target to reduce per capita consumption (PCC) by 12.5% during 2020-25 from an average of 157 litres.
The campaign features awareness raising adverts featuring comedian Joe Wilkinson, a consumption calculator and other online tools to understand and track usage, as well as social media coverage of local rivers and wildlife.
Joe Brownless, director of customer experience & technology at Affinity, said the company had passed the halfway mark towards its 20% leakage reduction target, but recognises further work is necessary.
He said: “We are working hard as a business to combat leak reduction, but the water supply issues faced by our industry this summer have shown that we also need to take greater steps to educate, and support our customers change their water usage. With customers in our area using as much as 157 litres a day on average, the Save Our Streams campaign is more important than ever.”
The programme had a “great response” last year – saving more than one billion litres of water, which the company hopes will be exceeded this year with this next step of the campaign.