A mum says there is "no more fat left to trim" off her household bills despite making changes at home to use less water. Victoria Owen said she had implemented a "don't waste it" rule, encouraging her children to have short showers and re-use the water after washing dishes. It comes after water companies across England and Wales were given the green light to increase bills for customers by an extra £3.4bn in the coming years, to meet increased pressures on infrastructure and the environment.
Welsh Water, Wales' main water and sewerage supplier, said it was working to support its most vulnerable customers and planned to invest £4.2bn by 2030 to improve services. People in most parts of Wales faced a 27% increase in their water bills from April 2025, with the average annual bill going up from £503 to £639. It marked the start of a five-year period of bill increases from Welsh Water, totalling 42% by 2029-30.
Pay more for your water bill or wait longer for a better service - new boss Water bills set to rise for many after firms permitted extra funding Victoria, from Cardiff, who is a single parent, said she spent "almost every single spare penny" on her household bills and there was "nothing left to waste", other than a Netflix subscription she had bought for her children. She has a water meter, meaning suppliers charge a customer for the precise amount consumed rather than using an estimated flat rate. "We turn the taps off when brushing our teeth, use the excess water on the plants after washing the dishes.
Victoria has introduced a shower timer to save water which has been "quite difficult" to enforce. "My kids want to stand there under the shower for hours," she said. "They've got a limited amount of time and then the hot tap goes on in the kitchen, which means they get showered with cold water." In a survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics, external (ONS), 84% of respondents said they had taken at least one action to cut water usage over the past month.
Figures obtained by the Welsh Liberal Democrats revealed that Welsh Water lost 85,000 million litres of water due to leaks in 2024/2025. Welsh Liberal Democrat David Chadwick has called on the water company to "urgently get its house in order" by fixing the leaky infrastructure. Hafren Dyfrdwy, which serves the north east of Wales, lost 5,400 million litres of water in the same year.
A Welsh Water spokesperson said it was aiming to reduce leakage in its network by 24% by 2030. It said it was investing £476m as part of a long-term project that would see the upgrade of the network over a period of years. "Climate change is also impacting the situation as drying soil conditions increases bursts over the summer periods," it added.
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