Woman slashes water bills by £88 each month after discovering leak

The Anglian Water metering programme has helped customers save an average of £251.97 every year.

Their improved programme helps to spot leaks within the home and resolve them, which in turn will hopefully encourage behaviour change in how people use water as well as help the environment.

Anglian Water customer Vicki Sloan was very grateful after a letter from Anglian Water prompted her to check her home for leaks as she was able to save £88 each month.

‌The leak she found meant her direct debit payments would have increased from £49 to £137 a month. However, Anglian Water offered to keep her payments at the original amount as she had reported the leak to them.

The Peterborough resident was contacted by Anglian Water in July 2022 after her meter readings were showing her water usage had significantly increased and suggested she checked for leaks within her property.

Vicki said: “After receiving the letter from Anglian Water I got in touch with my plumbing insurance company straight away. The plumber really struggled to find the leak at first.”

While Vicki’s leak was being investigated, Anglian Water fitted her home with a smart meter as the programme was being rolled out in her area at the time.

This helped to show how much water the household was using on a daily and hourly basis but also helped to confirm that the leak had to be coming from a pipe within her home validating the need for further investigation.

Vicki continued: “Because of the smart meter, we were able to find and fix the leak and it also now helps me keep my water usage on track, saving me even more money. I was in constant contact with Anglian Water customer services team – they were fantastic at providing me with advice and support.

“The leak meant my direct debit payments would have increased from £49 to £137 a month, but Anglian Water offered to keep my payments at the original amount as I had reported the leak to them. They even gave me a leakage allowance and reduced my monthly payments down to £43 a month as the leak was found to have been going on for a while.”

Their smart water metering installation programme aims to help customers better understand their water usage, plus detect leaks quicker both on the customer side and across its network, in a bid to save this precious resource and money off bills.

The programme has saved Anglian Water customers approximately £15million off annual water bills, last year alone, which equates to an average of £251.97 per customer.

Since the first meters were installed in 2020, Anglian Water has helped customers find and resolve more than 100,000 leaks at their properties.

By detecting leaks in customers’ homes sooner, their smart meters are helping people make huge savings. Vickie is saving £88 each month.‌

The smart meters have also saved customers from a potentially costly cleanup from water damage to their homes and belongings from leaks that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Their upgraded metering programme is forecasted to save the environment seven million litres of precious water between 2020 to 2025 by helping spot and resolve leaks in customers’ homes and even more by encouraging behaviour change in how people use water.

Ian Rule, director of water for Anglian Water said: “Through our smart meter programme, we’re helping our customers to understand their water usage and help spot when pipes or appliances in their home may be costing them and the environment unnecessarily.

“As the driest region of the country, most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and with the fastest growing population, we’re planning now for a future with more people and fewer raindrops.

“We invest heavily into resilient infrastructure and continue to drive leakage in our networks down to industry-leading low levels.

“But we all play a part in using water more sustainably, to keep as much water in the environment as possible, and we recognise our role in helping our customers use less and save more.

“So far, we’ve fitted more than half a million smart meters in customers’ homes and we’re already starting to see significant reductions in the amount of water we need to abstract from the environment as our customers use their smart meter data to reduce their water usage. This is really helping to protect our region’s precious rivers and the ecosystems that depend upon them.”

Britons can check their eligibility for an upgraded water meter, as well as further information on the Anglian Water website.