A CITIZENS Advice Bureau is to tackle Thames Water over fears it will target the genuinely struggling families in its scheme to restrict water flow to non-paying households.

The Abingdon CAB has written to its head office and is to contact the utility company itself after the Oxford Mail revealed on Monday the water supplier wants the Government to change legislation to allow it to drastically reduce supplies to inconvenience those who refuse to pay up.

A similar scheme already exists in Australia, where flow-restricting devices limit households to just enough water to flush a toilet or fill a jug, to meet public health requirements.

Thames Water, which is owed money by 18,000 households in Oxfordshire, said it would only restrict the power of its flow to customers who won’t pay, rather than can’t pay, and only then as a last resort.

The company has written to the all-party House of Commons environment committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the draft Flood and Water Management Bill, to look into the proposal.

But Susannah Ashworth, deputy manager at Abingdon CAB, feared the company would not be able to distinguish which people were genuinely unable to pay their bills and struggling families would be penalised.

She said: “We want to know how it knows. Which of these are people that won’t pay and which of those can’t pay?

“We are fascinated by this number, when they have profits of about £400m that they are going after 18,000 people in Oxfordshire.

“When people who are struggling to pay their bills come to us the first thing we ask is ‘have you spoken to the water company?’ and very often they haven’t.

“Lots of people are in a credit mess, but as long as they have a job and can pay off some of the bills each time then they’re okay, but in this time of the credit crunch and recession when these people lose their jobs it becomes a big problem.

“From our perspective, with our social-policy hat on, we are saying ‘hang on a minute, let’s look at this closely’.

“It’s fair to say people take comfort from water companies, rather than gas or electricity, that they are not going to be cut off, so this is quite striking.”

Thames Water spokesman Simon Evans said: “Firstly, no-one’s going to get cut off.

“We cannot do that by law, because water is a human right, and we absolutely do not want to do that.

“Unlike the gas and electricity industry, we are not allowed to cut people off for not paying, which means despite our bills being far lower than theirs and our bad-debt levels are much higher.

“Our bad debt, money that we unable to retrieve, was £45m in the 2008-9 financial year, up from £39m in the previous year, and that’s a problem for us.

“We’ve got a range of issues for someone who can’t pay, including our charitable fund which was set up last year with £5m to help people in genuine need.

“We don’t have the answers but we want MPs to see what may be the way forward.”