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Landlords and letting agents

If you are a landlord, we’ve answered some popular questions on this page about your water account which you may find useful.

If you manage a number of properties, you will also benefit from using the Landlord TAP service to advise us of any changes to your property portfolio. You can read more about this service below.

  • Normally, the occupier of a property is responsible for paying the water bill, (unless you have taken the decision to pay water bills on behalf of your tenant as part of your rental agreement). Therefore, please ask your tenant to contact us as soon as they move in so that we can set up their account and make sure their bills are accurate. It’s also important that you ask your tenant to provide a meter reading to us when they move out. This will ensure we send them a final bill for the water used up to when they left the property. It may also be a good idea for you to take a meter reading yourself when they move out, just in case they didn’t do this and we ask for it. Watch our video to see how to take a meter reading.

  • This will depend on whether the property has a meter or not. If your property has a meter, the charges are based on the amount of water you use. If you don’t have a meter, the rateable value of the property is used to calculate bills. Depending on how many people live in the property, the water bills may be lower with a water meter. Tenants are allowed to apply for a meter after being in a property for six months but they must inform their landlord they are about to apply.

    How we calculate your bill if you have a water meter

    How we calculate your bill if you don't have a water meter

  • Even if your property is empty, you still need to pay water charges if any water is being used, even a small amount for example for renovation, cleaning or heating. If you don’t need a water supply as the property will be empty for a long period of time, we can arrange to visit the property to temporarily disconnect the supply until a new tenant moves in, this way you will not have to pay any water charges. If your property does not have a meter, another option is to consider applying for a free water meter. This means you will only pay for the water you use which could be less than what you would pay if your charges were based on rateable value. When a tenant moves in to the address, their bills would then be based on a meter reading.

Landlord TAP

You can now advise us of any changes to your property portfolio using Landlord TAP - the secure national web portal for landlords and managing agents.

Visit landlord tap

The great thing about Landlord TAP is that it's free, easy to use and saves you time by automatically sending your updates to us, and your details are updated straight away.

You might use Landlord TAP to:

  • add new properties to your portfolio and bulk upload all your properties in one go
  • tell us about changes to tenants' details, including changes of tenancy
  • inform us if you sell or stop managing the property

If you would prefer not to use Landlord TAP please call us on 0345 672 2999

Important notice

Heavy rainfall and sewer flooding

The heavy rainfall may be causing flooding in some parts of the region.

Our teams are out working hard across the region helping our customers who have experienced sewer flooding in their homes.

If you’re experiencing flooding from a road or footpath and there is no evidence of sewage (toilet paper etc.) please report this to your local council, who are responsible for highways drainage flooding.

Please be aware that our phone lines are much busier than normal, take a look at our flooding page for further advice on what to do if you’re affected by flooding.

Heavy rainfall across the North West may be causing flooding in some parts of the region. Our teams are out working hard across the region helping our customers who have experienced sewer flooding in their homes.

Flooding advice

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