South West Water - Withheld Information

[craig1802]

A few months back i had a DRO completed to finally get rid of any debt that was hanging over me.
One of the Debtors were South West Water.
Yesterday i had two letters through from South West Water stating that i have in fact still got two accounts unpaid amounting to more than £2500 combined. The debt in question is for a property i lived at with my Ex wife over 10 years ago, she in fact was in charge of paying all the bills including council tax and rent etc, of which i have also had problems that needed resolving. It turned out she wasnt paying any of the bills and was hiding letters. Fortunately i have managed to sort out the council tax and rent debt but still have South West Water to deal with.
After looking into all this i found out that South West Water had in fact held back information about these debts whilst my DRO was being processed.
The Citizens Advice Bureau assigned me a case worker who dealt with everything for me, and he has now said that South West Water are notorious for withholding information and that legally i do not have a leg to stand on.
Surely this cant be legal as there would be no point in even doing the DRO as i am still constantly being chased???
Please advise.

[Kati]

Re: South West Water - Withheld Information

tagging [MENTION=48934]Debt Camel[/MENTION] (she should be able to help/advise ) xx

[Debt Camel]

Re: South West Water - Withheld Information

Can you go into more detail about "i found out that South West Water had in fact held back information about these debts whilst my DRO was being processed."

How large were the debts in your DRO?

What years do these water debts relate to? the six year limitation period for water debts runs from the date on the bill.

[craig1802]

Re: South West Water - Withheld Information

The citizens advice bureau informed me that he had in fact been in contact with south west water to get confirmation of all outstanding debts oweing to them in my name. they came back with a couple of accounts they had found in my name and they were included in the dro, but now south west water are saying that there is more debt oweing!
the dro i had completed came to around £10,000 in debt.
they have sent me two separate letters with two separate reference numbers on with different amounts,
1st letter is £1280 outstanding on my account as of 22nd june 2016
2nd letter is £529.11 as of 21st june 2016.
now i had my dro completed in december 2015, they cant be telling me that i owe them just over £1800 in water bills since last december?!?
when i spoke to my point of contact at cornwall citizens advice bureau he said he had contacted them directly to get all the debt information oweing to them in my name and they came back with the two accounts which got sorted, and now sww are sending another two accounts?
i havent paid anything to sww for water i am currently using until i get this resolved

[Debt Camel]

Re: South West Water - Withheld Information

OK, three different things here:

1) start paying your current water bills. That has nothing to do with this dispute.

2) ask CAB if they had a reply in writing from SWW listing the debts in late 2014 - you want a copy of that.

3) do you know what years the alleged debts refer to? Did you ever receive bills with these on?

[craig1802]

Re: South West Water - Withheld Information

Thank you for your reply.

1) i will contact SWW and start paying for the water i am using now, and let them know that i am in the process of speaking with my dro advisor regarding the debt that there is.

2) i shall speak to cab to see if he has any correspondence from sww at the time of sorting out the dro.

3) the years will be from 2012 to date, i got behind with payments but the dro was done to sort those existing debts out. yes i did receive bills for these but these were given to CAB cornwall for the DRO.