Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. These words from Coleridge’s The Ancient Mariner almost came true for Red Lion member Emma Edwards and family when their water rates rose so high that they nearly had to cancel their annual bill.

Emma’s problems started when her supplier Thames Water fitted a meter to her family’s household supply and they found their water bill rose by £130-a-year. She wrote to Thames Water and pointed out that she had a medical condition that meant she had to go to the loo 10-12 times in 24 hours and thus used more water than most people.

But after promising to help the Dartford mother-of-three, the company said that although they supported some types of illness they did not recognise her unusual condition – an ileo-anal pouch – and refused to lower her charges.

Months of  correspondence and phone calls followed – to no avail. So Emma wrote to her local MP, Dr Howard Stoate, a member of the Commons Select Committee on Health. The Labour MP raised Emma’s case in Parliament and contacted Thames Water.

A few weeks later Emma received a letter from the director of Thames Water, the UK’s  largest water company supplying 8.5 million homes. It said that “due to the nature of your medical conditions and personal circumstances,” it would charge her a flat-rate £199-a-year instead of the £300 plus she and her husband Terry had been paying.

“I was determined to go on campaigning about my position until I got a result. After all Thames Water were asking me to pay extra for having a problem,” a relieved Emma told Roar!.
Not all water companies take the same view. Anglian Water sends a leaflet to its eastern counties users highlighting the illnesses that qualify for lower bills. These include Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, abdominal stomas, incontinence and “any other medical condition which involves significant volumes of water usage” i.e. pouch problems.

If like Emma Edwards your water bills have soared in the past year or two, ask your local water company to send you a leaflet or else check the small print on the company’s website. If you still get no satisfaction  (whether you have a meter or not), contact the company, explain your situation and ask if they will reduce your bill. It could save you more than £100-a-year.

If the company refuses to help, ask them to explain why (they may not have a policy for pouch-holders yet) and then  contact me on 07939 110842 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and I will send you the correspondence that helped Emma win her case.

If that doesn’t work then Roar! will launch a campaign to make the water companies see sense.