What is the level of free allowance for water charges?
Each household will receive a free allowance of 30,000 litres of supplied water (and a corresponding amount of waste water) a year per primary residence. In addition, households will receive an additional free allowance for every child under 18 (aligned with entitlement to child benefit) to cover a child’s normal consumption of water supplied and waste water treated (this will be up to 38,000 litres per annum - the level of consumption underpinning this allowance to be verified from actual metering data); effectively, water charges will only apply to adults.
This means for a family of 2 adults and 2 young children, using about 190,000 litres of water, the free
allowance will be 106,000 litres - more than 50% of their usage.
