B Burnside, of Vincents Road, Kingsbridge, writes:

Having just received my water bill from South West Water, I wonder whether anyone can answer the following questions?

1) Why is it necessary to charge us twice for reading meters, customer services and meter maintenance? I refer to the standing charge on both water charges and sewerage charges.

2) Why, when we actually only keep five per cent of water billed for, cannot a rebate be paid on the 95 per cent of water you get back from us?

I would also be interested to know the current percentage of households in our region still not on water meters and how long it will be before we are all charged the same for the water we use?