High street chemist Boots’ bid to secure a refund on what it claims were more than 40 years of overpaid utility bills received a further setback yesterday when the Court of Appeal ruled against the company.
Boots has been suing utility firm Severn Trent Water for almost £8m, claiming it had been overcharging for the removal of “trade effluent” from its factory in Beeston, Nottingham, since 1974.
The case examines the rights of commercial owners or occupiers of premises to connect their drains to public sewers and the escalating cost that could mount up when the legal definition of brown water enters a grey area.
The water company has been supplying water and sewerage services to the factory since 1974. Its services include the drainage of surface water and the discharge of trade effluent.
Over the period, Severn Trent charged Boots for surface water drainage either according to rateable value or the area of the property. It used a meter to record and charge for the discharge of trade effluent.
Boots alleges that, over the period, surface water, including rainwater, has been draining through the meter, which means it has been overcharged.
But Severn Trent argues that it was entitled to charge this way. In a summary judgment earlier this year, Boots lost most of the case when a High Court judge ruled that, in the period from 1996, Severn Trent was entitled to charge for what the meter recorded, even if it was a mix of waters.
However, he said he was unable to dismiss the claim for overpaid bills from 1974 to 1996 due to lack of records.
At a hearing earlier this month, lawyers for Boots sought to recover ground by disputing the lower-court judge’s definition of “trade effluent”.
Boots’ argument is that it was “unjust” that “Boots had been charged both for the drainage of surface water by reference to the area of the site; and again for part of that surface water at trade effluent rates in so far as it formed part of the mixed liquid discharged into the foul sewer,” according to yesterday’s judgment.
But the Court of Appeal disagreed. While the legal definition of ‘trade effluent’ does exclude domestic sewerage it doesn’t exclude storm or surface water, the ruling said.
The judges dismissed the appeal.
