If you were a tenant, or living in temporary accommodation, between 1 April 2001 and 28 July 2013 you may be able to get a water bill refund.
A court case decided that we had acted as a 'water reseller' for Thames Water and not an 'agent'.
A water reseller is a ‘middleman’ who receives a supply of water and sewerage services from the water company and sells it on to the users.
This means that we mistakenly overcharged tenants.
We overcharged tenants by:
the amount of the commission Thames Water paid us
plus the allowance given for empty homes
This added up to 22.1% of the total charge.
We did not knowingly overcharge tenants, because we thought we were acting as an agent and not a water reseller.
We’re now paying this money back.
We’ve refunded affected tenants 22.1% of their water charges, with interest, for the period from April 2001 to July 2013.
Around 39,000 Southwark households were affected.