BWB Founder Urges Mass Cancellation of Direct Debits on BBC Radio

On Thursday 29 January, Katy Colley was interviewed on BBC Sussex Radio when the latest water bill increases were announced by OFWAT,

Katy expressed incredulity that her supplier Southern Water had been permitted to put up bills another 8% from April after last year's whopping rise of 47%.

'So what's happened there? Have we got a better service? Are we doing better with our water, or are we getting more outages, more bio beads spills, more flooding on in our town centers and more sewage in our water?

'It's really disgusting, isn't it? We're just paying for their criminal failure, neglect and greed,.' she told Danny Pike on his breakfast show.

She insisted that the present system was not sustainable and that water companies had to be brought back into public ownership as they were 'environmentally invsolvent'.

She also urged listeners to act immediately by cancelling their direct debits. This, she said, was an entirely safe, legal and risk-free way to stop water companies treating customers like 'cash cows'.

'What most people don't know is that actually water companies take money from us in advance and they hold it,' she explained.

'There's no there's no legal obligation to pay by direct debit. The only legal obligation is to pay your bill twice a year when you receive your bill. So what you can do is you can call up or email your water company straight away, saying, "I'm going to stop my direct debit, and if you have any money held on surplus, I'd like it returned please."

'So a lot of people have found, quite surprisingly, they've had hundreds of pounds sent back to them by their water company, because that's how they're maintaining these their business. It's through cash flow and cash flow that they're taking from all of us right now.'

Listen to the whole interview here: