Water bills are set to increase on average by 13.3 percent this year for residents. Previously incorporated into council rates, Wellington’s mayor said people will see that component removed from their next council rates’ bill.<\/p>\n
Wellington City resident Ceridwyn Roberts said she received two water bills last week – one for her apartment, and one for her basement car park.<\/p>\n
Her apartment bill was about $380 for the quarter, she said, while her car park bill was $89.<\/p>\n
“I don’t mind paying for water, but this seems ridiculous.<\/p>\n
“This seems completely antithetical to what they’re trying to do, surely, because surely what’s happening is a. we need to pay for the water pipes and b) we need to decrease the use of water.”<\/p>\n
Roberts said while there’s a small tap in the room, she personally doesn’t use water from it – though it might get used to fill up something occasionally.<\/p>\n
She said there wasn’t any stormwater run-off from the car park, and no sewage coming from it.<\/p>\n
A Lower Hutt resident, who RNZ agreed not to name, said she was shocked to see her water bill was $1079.07 for the quarter.<\/p>\n
She said after looking into her bill and Tiaki Wai’s website, she’s seeing a double set of charges, due to a granny flat on her property where her mother-in-law lives.<\/p>\n
The resident said the granny flat shares the plumbing connection for the toilet, shower and sink, with the main house.<\/p>\n
“I view it as really unreasonable … there’s only one connection that everything goes through. So it seems like we’re being double charged for that connection. You know, anything that happens to the water beyond the toby is our thing to deal with.”<\/p>\n
A quarterly bill of over $1000 was too much, she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s wrong .. I don’t understand how something can cost that much for, you know, having three people in one household to use that much water usage.”<\/p>\n
Error in Lower Hutt residents’ payment system<\/p>\n
Lower Hutt resident Dani Garvey said she wanted to pay her water bill in weekly payments throughout the year.<\/p>\n
Last week, Tiaki Wai’s chief customer officer Liza Gunn said residents would not have to pay full amounts of quarterly payments by 1 September if they set up a direct debit with Tiaki Wai.<\/p>\n
But Garvey tried to do this, and was told she couldn’t, she said.<\/p>\n
She had first gone to Tiaki Wai’s website and been directed to the Payble app – but was unable to set up weekly payments across the year.<\/p>\n
“I called Tiaki Wai, and followed their prompts and got put through the rates team at Hutt City Council, who’s apparently the payments team, they tried to do a regular weekly payment, based on the annual amount, in many different ways – their system would not allow it.”<\/p>\n
Her first quarter bill was about $562 – she said – and if she could pay weekly that would work out to between $42 and $46 per week, rather than $140 per week.<\/p>\n
She said $140 is “huge” in a cost of living crisis.<\/p>\n
“The fact that they haven’t given the full, annual amount in my initial invoice, and they’re effectively trying to force me to pay $140 a week – it seems like it’s extortion.”<\/p>\n
In a statement, Gunn said Hutt City Council was aware of an issue on the Payble App – and staff were trying to fix it.<\/p>\n
“It’s a configuration quirk at this point that we are working quickly to resolve.<\/p>\n
“We also have a message up on our HCC Payble page to this effect, and we will have a resolution as soon as possible.”<\/p>\n
She said she didn’t recommend people sign up to regular payments until it was sorted, and updates would be made on the website.<\/p>\n
Gunn said Roberts’ water bill for the car park was likely due to stormwater infrastructure charging – though there may be a drinking water charge too, if there’s a tap in the car park.<\/p>\n
![\"Chair](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/4JYBOSC_Will_Peet_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Tiaki Wai board chair Will Peet.<\/p>\n
Supplied \/ Tiaki Wai<\/p>\n
“Stormwater charges help fund the whole network that manages rainwater across the customer’s area; not just pipes.<\/p>\n
“This includes maintaining, repairing and upgrading all types of stormwater infrastructure that collects and carries runoff and helps reduce flood risk across the area.”<\/p>\n
Tiaki Wai board chair Will Peet said water charges are increasing on average, by about 13 percent for the region’s residents this year.<\/p>\n
He said the new entity has inherited the four Wellington councils’ water charging systems.<\/p>\n
Porirua, Upper and Lower Hutt have a fixed water charge, with a small amount based on property value. Wellington city council has been basing water charges on property value, not usage, he said.<\/p>\n
“Over time, we want to move to something fairer, that’s more based on connections, and as we roll water meters out, that’s more based on usage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wellington residents have questions over new water costs Checkpoint Wellington region residents say they’ve been handed “ridiculous” and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-557379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}