Ofwat head admits poor will struggle...The head of the water industry regulator has admitted his own church would not be able to afford to pay the new "rain tax" that is crippling parishes, Scout troops and small sports clubs. Philip Fletcher, the chairman of Ofwat, is also part of the Church of England's governing body, the General Synod, and faced fellow members to concede that he was the "villain" in the row over the £100million in extra bills being imposed on charities and religious groups. He defended the new system of charging for the rainwater that lands on roofs and pours into public drains and sewers, claiming it is fair and environmentally friendly. It treats places of worship, community halls and charity buildings as if they were commercial premises, charging them according to the size of their land rather than their rateable value. This means that a parish church in Knutsford, Cheshire, now has to pay £10,896 a year for its water, 20 times as much as a nearby Rolls-Royce showroom, while other groups have seen their bills rise by 1,400 per cent in a year. So far only four of the 10 companies in England that deal with wastewater have introduced the new charges, mostly in the north, but already the additional charges placed on churches, charities and community groups are estimated at £100m a year. And Mr Fletcher conceded that if the regime was imposed on the church in London where he is churchwarden, it would struggle to meet the cost. In a Synod debate on the so-called rain tax, he said: "I speak to Synod as churchwarden of a small inner-city church in Southwark. We have bills of £350 a year. "We would of course find it very difficult to cope with the sort of price increases described." |
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