Yorkshire Water has pledged £15 million of financial support from its shareholders to assist households struggling to afford water bills amid rising living costs.
The package was announced in response to enquiries from billpayers requesting support more than doubling from between four and five thousand to ten thousand in the past three months. It will bring its financial support for low-income customers during AMP7 to £115 million.
Zoe Burns-Shore, Yorkshire’s director of customer experience told Utility Week: “We’re seeing customers who don’t necessarily qualify for existing social tariffs that we offer either because their bill is capped or their salary is slightly too high for our schemes. We are seeing this level of customers struggling who never have in the past so we want to extend schemes out to include more customers.”
She explained the company is working through how to best utilitise the money to ensure the help is meaningful for those who require it: “People in that lower income bracket but not on benefits are really being squeezed.”
“This today is an extra £5 million a year for the rest of this AMP and when we put our plans in for PR24 we will be including the package we think is relevant for customers at that time,” Burn-Shore said.
“There’s such a need for investment but also with the cost of living crisis we know we need to keep bills low for customers. PR24 will be centred on that tension of needing that infrastructure investment but also needing to keep costs low.”
The new funding from shareholders, Burns-Shore said, is important to show that the company was invested in doing the right thing for its customers in Yorkshire: “This is the company putting investment into the local economy. With the cost of living where it is, asking customers to cross subsidy wasn’t appropriate so we are glad the shareholders agreed with us.”
She said the company was confident it can support around 100,000 customers to meet the current demand.
“Supporting customers with bills is very high up the agenda of water companies, which I think as a monopoly we have an obligation to do.”
In recent weeks United Utilities and Severn Trent have bolstered the financial help available to households who cannot afford water bills.
On the proposed single social tariff – suggested by CCW and under review by Defra – Burns-Shore said Yorkshire’s region would likely be a net beneficiary, having some of the UK’s most economically deprived areas.
“It could see us being able to help more customers so we’re supportive of it provided it’s not too complex to administer and it generally does help more people. We don’t want there to be barriers to customers being able to access it.”