The Court of Appeal have slammed Lib Dem-run Kingston Council for unlawful water charges and ordered Councils, including Lib Dem-run Sutton Council, to pay back residents millions of pounds worth of overcharged water bills, which has been welcomed following years of campaigning by the local Conservatives.
Thousands of Council tenants may be entitled to a refund after being overcharged for their water bills before April 2018.
This is following a Court of Appeal judgement in relation to another Liberal Democrat-run Council, Kingston, which found that Councils, like Sutton, had had been buying and reselling water from Thames Water, rather than acting as an "agent" and being paid a commission to collect rates.
This meant it was charging more commission than the Water Resale Order 2006 permitted, and it had to pay the difference back to tenants.
Sutton council tenants were paying their water bills as part of their service charge to Sutton Housing Partnership until April 2018 under this scheme, which was then changed and residents instead have paid their water bills directly to Thames Water since then.
Accounts from the Council and Sutton Housing Partnership show monies were set aside to compensate residents in 2018, but no refunds have been offered until today’s announcement.
Sutton Council and Sutton Housing Partnership have now announced that they will be setting up a refund scheme for those who were Council tenants before April 2018, having resisted calls from local Conservatives as far back as 2018 to move immediately to refund affected residents. Conservatives pledged at the 2018 Local Elections to refund affected residents immediately.
Commenting, MP for Sutton, Cheam and Worcester Park, Paul Scully, said:
“Whilst I am delighted that Council tenants will now receive the refund that they are entitled to, this has taken far too long.
“Conservative-run London Councils, like Wandsworth, immediately decided to refund their residents for overpayments, unlike Lib Dem-run Councils like Sutton and Kingston, which have clearly tried to avoid having to issue these refunds.”
Commenting, Conservative spokesperson for Housing, Economy and Business, Councillor Catherine Gray, said:
“Lib Dem-run Sutton Council have known they will need to do this for years – it is shameful that they’ve left it this long to refund residents what they are owed.
“We will be closely scrutinising the implementation of these refunds and doing all we can to encourage tenants to come forward and claim what is owed to them, especially those who are no longer Council tenants and may not know about what they could be owed – the Council must not use this is an opportunity to limit the cost of their failure by failing to adequately notify those who may not know about their entitlement.”
Commenting, MP for Carshalton and Wallington, Elliot Colburn, said:
“This water overpayment scandal is yet another example of where this Lib Dem-run Council should hang its head in shame.
“Local Conservatives were calling for residents to be refunded what is owed as far back as 2018, so now the Council has finally agreed to do so, they must move quickly to refund all affected tenants as soon as possible.”
Council tenants should receive details in writing by the end of January 2021 on how refunds will be processed. Sutton Council and Sutton Housing Partnership are also expected to publish details of how to claim for those people who were Council tenants before April 2018, but are not Council tenants anymore.
Further Information
- Below are news articles from 2018, where Sutton was explicitly named as one of eight Boroughs that had collectively made £33 million through these water deals in 6 years:
- https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/5465503/over-170000-london-council-tenants-in-line-for-payouts-over-unfair-water-bills/amp/
- https://www.essexlive.news/news/councils-giving-huge-refunds-millions-739298.amp
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-london-42072837
- https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/london-council-challenging-high-court-water-charges-ruling-54544
- More information on the water overpayments scandal can be found at Water Claims UK here.
- You can find details in Sutton Council’s 2018 accounts where they estimate their potential liability as £1.2 million on page 58 here. Similarly you can find this same information on page 84 of Sutton Housing Partnership’s accounts here.
- The Council was still being vague on implementing refunds as recently as the Full Council meeting on 23rd November 2020. See the minutes here in the questions between Councillor Tim Crowley and Councillor Tony Shields to Councillor Jayne McCoy on page 15.
- Conservatives have been campaigning for this for years. See here for our 2018 Local Election leaflets where we made the pledge to refund SHP residents what they were owed.
- The full judgment in the case of LB Kingston v Moss can be found here.
- Sutton Council’s announcement can be found here. Sutton Housing Partnership’s announcement can be found here.
