Yorkshire Water is underlining the support available to any of its customers who are struggling to pay their bills in light of a new report on water poverty.

The Consumer Council for Water report Living With Water Poverty 2014: Keeping Your Head Above Water published this week revealed that one in five people are struggling to pay their water bills but many suffer in silence.

The findings have prompted Yorkshire Water to alert customers going through similar issues to those detailed in the report to a number of schemes on offer from Yorkshire Water that help thousands of people around the region with support to their water bills of over £4 million.

The measures put in place by Yorkshire Water include:

• Flexible payment plans – All customers are offered the option to help them pay their bills at the best time for them - whether that’s half-yearly, monthly, fortnightly or weekly – as well as various payment methods, including free payment at the Post Office from this year.
• Budgeting Advice – Doorstep advice, inbound calls and signposting on budgeting advice is targeted at those customers in financial difficulties. This is done in partnership the Citizens Advice Bureau, MIND, debt advice groups, Age UK and Step Change
• WaterSure – 5,000 customers around the region have capped bills of £375. The scheme helps customers with a water meter who are in receipt of income based benefits, in large family households or may have medical conditions affecting their water usage.
• Resolve – Qualifying customers may be able to benefit from Yorkshire Water’s Resolve scheme that supports customers out of their arrears by creating an incentive plan where customer payments are matched by Yorkshire Water over a 12 months period clearing outstanding arrears. This scheme awards £2.3 million to over 4,000 customers each year.

Customers can also turn to Community Trust for help - a registered independent charity which aims to break the cycle of debt for customers by writing-off arrears for customers with multiple debts. This wipes the slate clean and allows customers to have a fresh start. The charity is funded by Yorkshire Water's parent company, Kelda, by £1 million per year.

Timothy Sheer, Head of Billing and Collections at Yorkshire Water, said:

“This latest report just underlines what we know - that debt and managing payments is a real concern for a lot of customers. That’s why we’ve set up these schemes to help those people who are in that position.

“We contribute over £4 million each year to support those customers and we really want to raise awareness of these schemes so that people don’t continue to suffer in silence when there’s help on offer.”