Episode 4 Postcode Lottery

Did you know that where you live dictates what you get?

Even one side of the street can be completely different to another.

Because every part of our lives

is affected by a line on a map and a few letters and numbers.

I'm here to get you a better deal

and to reveal what is really going on in the postcode lottery.

In today's programme, the postcode lottery that forced a family out of their own home.

Alison was having to get up in the middle of the night and sleep downstairs

because she couldn't take it.

The couple caught in a baby-business postcode lottery.

It's not as if I'm being greedy. Just one child,

-that's all we want, isn't it?

-That's not a lot to ask.

# In south-east Cornwall We don't dwell

# Heave away, haul away #

And we join the shanty singers making a song and dance about their water rates.

My water rates for my two-bedroom flat are £700 a year

and the water rates for the business are close to £4,000 a year.

Are you going to be a winner in the postcode lottery?

I'm here to help you get the right number.

Hello. My Postcode Lottery team have been scouring the country

to find the most ridiculous and inexplicable decisions

taken about your lives based purely on where you live.

Today, we're going to bring you stories from Cardiff to Cornwall

and from Portsmouth to Hemel Hempstead.

But first, we're heading to Reading.

The Southcote district of Reading,

a green and pleasant suburb for most.

But for those unfortunate enough to be living on Byefield Road,

Brunel Road and Hatford Road,

it's the centre of a postcode lottery that made their lives a living hell,

as the Sullivan family know only too well.

It started about three years ago.

Alison was having to get up in the night and sleep downstairs

because she couldn't take it.

I couldn't even listen to the TV on an afternoon

because you would hear them between floors.

I've got tablets to help me sleep.

It's been an absolute nightmare from start to finish.

And what is the horror that has made their lives such a misery?

The lottery of postcode pest-control.

There are an estimated 80 million rats in the UK

and some experts claim that as you sit and watch this programme,

there is a rat just six feet away from you.

In the past five years,

there has been an estimated 39-percent increase in the UK rat population.

Some blame longer periods between bin collections,

some blame private water companies not dealing with decrepit sewage systems,

but many other experts are blaming a postcode lottery

that allows local councils to charge such high prices for pest control

that people cannot afford to prevent vermin populations spiralling.

In the past five years,

60 percent of local councils have begun charging a fee to rid us of rats.

In some postcodes, if you can't pay for the problem to be dealt with

you might just have to live with it,

as the Sullivan family in Reading were to find to their cost.

We'd lived in Hatford Road for 15 years,

and then three years ago we started getting a rat problem.

They were in our cavities.

They ate the fan out of the kitchen wall.

Carpets were chewed.

They were on the kids' beds, in our wardrobe,

they'd urinate on our clothes.

The damage was untold and the smell was horrendous.

Faced with a problem not of their making to begin with,

the Sullivans tried to deal with the situation themselves.

We went to the supermarket and bought rat poison.

I put trays in the wardrobes, under beds, under chests of drawers.

I got up every morning, all the poison was gone.

We'd have to go to the supermarket and get more poison, do it again.

There was never any results.

I think I found one dead rat in the kitchen and I think he was hit by a trap.

I don't think the poison done anything at all. It just fed them.

The Sullivans then sought help from a private pest-control company.

We got a company in from London.

I think they cost us over £130, and that was just for one visit.

That visit didn't resolve the problem.

But they were unable to afford another £130

so the rats kept on coming.

They chewed through the bottom of my door

and were using it to come in and out and get into the airing cupboard,

where all the pipes were.

At first I blocked it up.

One night, one of them tried getting through

so I kicked the door to try and scare it away.

I opened the blockage and it ran in and went straight into the airing cupboard.

Normal nights here now, when I'm going to sleep,

I just expect to hear them running across the loft.

You just wait for the sound.

I walked into Maisie's room one day and there was two rats sat on the bed.

And they were just...

They didn't even care that I was there!

I didn't even scare them!

I had to kick the bed for them to move.

It was ridiculous. It was as though I was trespassing on them.

She wouldn't sleep in her bed any more.

That meant one of us was downstairs.

We were only a four-inch-wall apart and she wouldn't go in there.

Unable to contain the infestation,

and aware that they were not the only residents dealing with the issue,

they turned to Reading Council for help.

But what many of us don't realise is that pest control is such a postcode lottery

because councils are not legally obliged to provide a pest-control service,

and most certainly not for free.

Did you know that under the 1949 Prevention of Pests Act,

your council is required to do whatever is necessary

to keep your district free from rats and mice?

And in 21st-century postcode lottery Britain,

that means your council has to do one of three things.

If you live in Birmingham, Belfast, East Renfrewshire, Tower Hamlets or Swansea, congratulations,

your council is one of an ever-decreasing number

who offer a domestic rat-catching service absolutely free.

If, however, you live in Fife, Kirklees, Haringey, the Cotswolds, Powys or Omagh,

sorry, your council is one of an ever-increasing number

whose pest-control department will charge you anything from a fiver to almost £150

to come out and attempt to treat your problem.

But there's another option. If you live in West Norfolk, Brentwood,

Cornwall, Epping Forest or Carmarthenshire,

I'm here to inform you that your council is one of the ten percent

who no longer provide a pest-control service at all.

Some councils will tell you to contact a specialist pest-control contractor,

but some might warn you that unless you take action,

you might be prosecuted under the 1949 Prevention of Damage by Pests Act.

Ouch!

Back in Reading, the good news for the Sullivans

was that their council did provide a service.

The bad news - there was a fee.

The council rat-catcher came in.

He was £25 for three visits.

I think we paid him at least three times.

It got to the stage where he was our Monday wake-up call because he was coming that often.

We were on first-name terms.

He'd put the poison in the loft and it was like feeding time at the zoo.

It was like a cavalry charge coming across the loft

to come and eat the poison.

All the time the council were just, "No, there's not a problem."

It's all down to us.

For two years, the Sullivans paid the council repeated fees

for the unsuccessful treatment of their rat infestation.

The council blamed the Sullivans for the situation,

whilst acknowledging in correspondence

that there appeared to be a wider problem in the local area.

To rub salt into the wounds,

when the Sullivans were yet again forced to contact the council's pest-control service in early 2011,

they were astonished to find

there had been an overnight 500 percent hike in the cost of the service.

They said it would be £127... HE SIGHS

..plus VAT, I think. Or £110 plus VAT,

which worked out at £127.

Caught out in a postcode lottery catch-22,

the Sullivans were forced to pay around £127,

knowing that in nearby South Oxfordshire,

a similar service would cost £26.

Just down the road in Slough, residents were only being charged a tenner.

Still Reading Council would not budge.

The council denied the problem, even up to June 27th this year.

They sent me a letter stating that there wasn't a problem.

And the next week, they asked us to move out

and move into these premises where we are now.

Without warning, the council moved the Sullivans out of their rat-infested home

and into their current temporary address.

And the catalyst for this sudden decision?

On the 1st of July, 2011,

an elderly, bedridden neighbour was gnawed by rats

as she lay recovering from a stroke.

The neighbour later died in hospital.

It took this terrible incident for the council to finally acknowledge

that there was a problem across the neighbourhood and not just at the Sullivans' home.

And this was three years after they first raised the issue.

In a statement given to the Postcode Lottery team, Reading Council say:

But that required effect has come three years too late for the Sullivans.

Hundreds of pounds out of pocket and still living in temporary accommodation,

they hope Reading Council will not force them

to move back into the council house of their worst nightmares.

We definitely don't want to go back to our old house.

We're just going to be laid at night waiting for the noises to start again.

Maisie's going to have nightmares.

Every time you see a speck of black dust on your carpet,

you'll think a rat's been in.

Since we filmed the Sullivans, Reading Council has backtracked on its exorbitant price hike.

In January of this year, pest-control services were slashed

from £127 to £70,

or £45 for concessions.

The council also released a statement

saying that after their 500 percent price hike,

their pest-control department suffered a big drop in requests for treatment

from around 600 a year to just 84 on average.

A statement which just gives weight to the experts

who blame the pest-control charges postcode lottery

for the ever-increasing rat population.

One-in-six couples in the UK have trouble falling pregnant.

That's difficult enough to deal with

without the added complication of being caught in the IVF postcode lottery.

That is exactly what is happening to thousands of people in this country,

including the couple in our next story.

Portsmouth, on the south coast of England,

is home to Sarah and Levi Johnson.

Happily married for six years, they want for only one thing to make their lives complete -

a baby.

Everybody thinks they're going to go on to marry and have children

and you never think that you might have problems in having children.

You just think it's a natural thing, to reproduce

and your children to carry on your name.

We've been trying for six years now,

so it's, you know,

it's draining, it's emotional

and there's days when I can't leave the house and I just don't want to do anything.

I don't want to see anybody that's pregnant,

speak to anyone that's pregnant,

I'd just rather stay at home in my little safe haven, so to speak.

Sarah's attempts to conceive naturally

have been complicated by a string of related medical conditions.

Sarah has polycystic ovaries, endometriosis and fibroids.

All of them make getting pregnant that much harder.

Throughout her marriage to Levi, Sarah has been taking medication to manage these conditions.

Until recently, they were also receiving help trying to get pregnant naturally.

We were under a fertility consultant,

had all the various tests and procedures that they wanted to check,

and then basically he just turned round and said,

"There's nothing more we can do for you, that's it.

"Unless you've got £5,000 or you want to remortgage or get a loan..."

So that was it. That was the end of anybody doing anything for us.

It was heartbreaking. I came out and burst into tears.

I thought my whole life had ended.

It's devastating watching Sarah go through it.

You want to put your arms around her and give her a big cuddle.

You feel... It's not so much pity, you're trying to understand what she's going through,

and you can't imagine the pain, what it would be like to be told

"There's nothing more we can do. You can't have children."

For most people in Sarah and Levi's position,

the solution is IVF on the NHS.

IVF - in vitro fertilisation - is a laboratory procedure

in which a woman's egg cell is fertilised by a man's sperm outside of the human body.

The fertilised egg is transferred back into the woman's uterus,

where, hopefully, a successful full-term pregnancy will occur.

Here in Britain, we are pioneers in IVF.

In 1978, the world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown,

was born in Manchester.

And for the past 25 years, thousands of more test-tube babies have followed.

In 2009, 12,714 IVF babies were born in the UK.

In 2010,

over 45,000 more British women had IVF treatment.

So, how is it that in a nation of medical miracles and bouncing babies,

thousands more are still being denied access

to this potentially life-changing treatment?

The postcode lottery, of course.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE for short,

recommend that couples who meet the criteria for IVF

receive three free cycles of treatment on the NHS.

But as Sarah and Levi were about to discover, the problem and the postcode lottery

lies in how your local primary care trust

interpret one little word - criteria.

I can't have IVF because I don't meet the criteria.

Each primary care trust has a different list of criteria

that every applicant has to meet before they will even be considered for IVF.

The criteria list for Portsmouth's PCT is particularly rigorous.

Your BMI has to be under 30,

you have to be under 35 years old,

a non-smoker, don't drink,

and no previous children from any partner whatsoever.

Sarah and Levi fail Portsmouth's criteria on two counts.

Her BMI, her Body Mass Index, is slightly higher than the recommended calculation,

which she can address by losing weight,

but what she cannot change is that Levi has a child from a previous relationship.

I think it's totally unfair, because life's not like that any more.

People get married, divorced,

they start new relationships, they remarry.

They should not be denied the chance to have children in a loving family.

Even if Sarah did meet all the criteria,

Portsmouth only offers one course of IVF treatment per couple

instead of the three courses recommended by NICE.

Furthermore, since her original application for IVF

Sarah has also fallen foul of yet another rule -

she has crossed the PCT's 30-to-35- years-of-age treatment window.

I'm older now. I haven't started treatment within the age gap

so I'm classed as too old for IVF.

Down the coast in Brighton,

Sarah's age would not have been an issue.

Brighton PCT offer IVF to couples

until the NICE-recommended age of 39.

They also allow the recommended three treatments per couple.

But Sarah's case is just the tip of the iceberg.

It seems every primary care trust has a different set of criteria

and thousands of couples are caught up in this lottery right across the country.

Couples like Linda and Aaron.

With NICE's recommended age range for treatment being between 23 and 39 years of age,

32-year-old Linda thought she'd be ideally placed to receive IVF from her PCT in Surrey,

only to find that the PCT will only offer IVF if you are 39,

not a year younger, not a year older,

which is all the more nonsensical

when you realise that IVF's general success rate of 25 percent

falls sharply for anyone over 35 years of age.

Maybe they should consider moving to Ayrshire and Arran or the Borders

where there is no minimum age

and eligible couples can have their three full cycles.

They should think twice before moving to the Midlands.

Most of their PCTs have a maximum age policy for male partners.

There's also a cross-country postcode lottery on previous children.

In Portsmouth, as we know, it's an "absolutely no previous children" policy.

In Bolton, one partner is allowed to have a child from a previous relationship.

But hats off to the very generous City and Hackney

where, as long as you've no children in your current relationship,

they'll allow you a maximum of four from your previous ones.

Confused? Well, it could be worse.

You could be in Warrington, North Yorkshire and York,

West Sussex, Stockport or North Staffordshire.

If you do live in any of these PCTs and are hoping for IVF on the NHS,

the stark response is "forget it".

They don't offer any IVF treatments whatsoever.

The result of all these arbitrary variations

is that real people, like the Johnsons,

get caught up in the IVF postcode lottery.

But whilst many feel powerless, others continue to fight.

I've started a petition online

to try and get the criteria changed and the postcode lottery stopped.

The criteria should be the same across the UK.

I want to get the numbers up to about 1,000 signatures

and then hopefully deliver it to 10 Downing Street.

Sarah continues her own personal battle for IVF

and is currently on her third and final appeal.

There is someone out there that can help us.

I'll just keep fighting until I eventually get my child.

It's not as if I'm being greedy. Just one child,

-that's all we want, isn't it?

-That's not a lot to ask.

We'll be back later with some interesting developments with Sarah and Levi's case.

"Congratulations, you've won a set of left-handed screwdrivers,

"a chocolate teapot or a skirting-board ladder."

It doesn't really matter. Junk mail... Don't we just love it?

But did you know that all that unsolicited paper that is landing on your doormat

is there as a result of a postcode lottery?

And not just any postcode lottery.

The people sending this out think they know what you want,

like and what you're thinking.

Do you want to know more? Then, follow me.

Mobiles, broadband, booze, credit card offers,

blah-blah-blah-blah-blah...

Does junk mail bring you any joy or does it make your blood boil?

-My heart sinks.

-I get far too much.

-It has its uses, but there is far too much of it.

-I throw it away as soon as I get it.

Nearly 12 billion items of junk mail land on our mats every year.

That's around 450 per UK household.

About 90 percent of it is unsolicited.

But why and where on earth does it come from?

From a place that thinks it knows you better than you know yourself.

Because if you think all this has been randomly dropped through your letterbox,

you'd be wrong!

It's been especially chosen for you

by people who think they've got you worked out

just by your postcode.

Welcome to the TNT headquarters in Marlow, Buckinghamshire.

TNT is one of Britain's leading distributors of junk mail,

or Unaddressed Direct Mail, as they prefer to call it.

TNT use your postcode to identify your desires.

"Congratulations, you've been chosen..."

This type of marketing is very, very popular.

Research has been conducted that indicates

that 80 percent of households like to receive these items

and 89 percent remember receiving these items,

which makes it a more memorable marketing channel than TV.

But how do TNT make sure your unaddressed direct mail is so memorable?

By using this very sophisticated piece of software called Mosaic

to work out what kind of person you are, what you are likely to earn

and what you might be tempted to buy,

just by feeding it your postcode.

Mosaic gets information from the National Census,

council tax bands and local retail data

to give your postcode one of 67 different classifications.

It then uses your marketing classification to work you out.

So let's see it in action.

We've asked TNT to show us how Mosaic sees the Grangetown area of Cardiff.

Mosaic shows Cardiff to be an area of varied affluence.

Purple and dark blue indicate wealthy areas,

with red and orange indicating areas that are less prosperous.

The Grangetown area of Cardiff is a mix of all four,

which doesn't really help our postcode profilers.

But by using its other profiling tools,

Mosaic nominates a marketing classification for Grangetown.

And it's Type 28, Asian Attainment.

Type 28 indicates a population with a largely south-Asian background,

high skill levels, high private-sector employment

large houses and specialist retail outlets.

So, how accurate is that?

When we went to Grangetown to put Mosaic to the test,

we found that it was of largely south-Asian background,

there were large houses

and plenty of specialist retail outlets.

Let's see what its residents make of their accurately defined Type 28 direct mail.

Most of the time, it's irritating the people.

We are receiving mails from the same people, not for one time...

If I am receiving one time, that is OK,

but if I am receiving more than a couple of times,

there will be no use for that.

I think it's rubbish. I don't really read it. I automatically throw it in the bin.

None of the people we spoke to in Grangetown were fans of direct mail,

although clearly, many of us do respond positively to it

otherwise businesses, large and small,

would not spend tens of millions on it each year.

But what if we simply don't want to receive

any type-targeted, postcode-profile direct mail?

It's important to us that we listen to consumers.

If they are not happy receiving the range of items that we deliver,

we adhere to a scheme which is operated by the Direct Marketing Association,

whereby they can choose to opt out of receiving these items.

That's good news for me and for advertisers.

It means I'm not causing complaints at a consumer level,

it means the number of items that I'm delivering are likely to be more effective.

They're not going to people who don't look at them,

and that means advertisers will see a better return on investment

and probably do more of it in the future.

So, how easy is it to stop Mosaic from targeting you?

Well, not very, it seems.

If you want to junk your junk,

there are three schemes you can sign up to.

The Post Office have one called Door-toDoor Opt-Out

and the Direct Marketing Association have two,

the Mail Preference Scheme and the Your Choice Preference Scheme.

But none of them can guarantee 100 percent

that you won't receive any more junk mail,

which all sounds a bit rubbish to me.

We all know that the NHS is paid for by our taxes

and that it's free to all of us,

but did you know that NHS trusts up and down the country

are topping up on those taxes with a stealth charge

that raked them in over £100 million last year?

Are we all being short-changed

with the NHS parking postcode lottery?

When you or a loved-one are sick or ill and need to go to hospital,

the last thing you want to worry about

is whether you run the risk of receiving a parking ticket or even being clamped.

This is exactly what is happening to tens of thousands of patients,

their concerned relatives and friends

when they visit their local hospital.

If you live in Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland, count your blessings.

The vast majority of NHS trusts in these three countries

offer free hospital parking for all.

If you live in England, however, count your pennies and your pounds

because, depending on your postcode,

your NHS trust will charge anywhere between 30 pence and £6 an hour

to park at their hospital.

It's a particularly high price to pay for those requiring long-term treatment.

We're going to Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, to meet a cancer patient

who has really being given the run-around in the NHS parking postcode lottery.

My name's Karen Sheldon. I'm a single mum.

I've got two teenage girls.

I was diagnosed with cancer in March 2009

and then started the rigorous, long journey

of various operations

and chemotherapy and drug treatment.

When Karen was diagnosed with breast cancer over two years ago,

she began a round of treatment that saw her visiting her local hospital on a regular basis.

But then secondary cancer struck

and Karen found herself travelling to a further three hospitals around the Greater London area.

Unable to work because of illness,

meeting the fuel cost was hard enough,

but then Karen realised she was caught in a postcode lottery

that was forcing her to pour hundreds of pounds

into four different sets of hospital parking meters

at widely differing hourly rates.

And to illustrate the true cost of this stealth tax on the sick,

Karen is taking us on a quick hospital tour.

And our first postcode port-of-call

is Karen's local hospital in Hemel Hempstead.

This is where I had to come for things like bone scans, CT scans,

X-rays and all my blood tests.

The hospital charged visitors and patients £12 for over five hours,

£6 for three to four hours

or a flat £4 for anything under three hours.

Charging for a minimum of three hours

is a particularly sly way of maximising profits from patients,

as Karen explains.

Sometimes I would only be in there 10 to 15 minutes

but I was having to pay £4 a time

to actually park up and literally run in and run out again,

which is an absolutely extortionate amount.

24 miles southeast of Hemel Hempstead is the Royal Free Hospital,

where Karen had her surgery.

The Royal Free charged an incredible £6 for anything under two hours,

a charge that almost cost some of Karen's visitors dearly.

When I'd had my surgery, I had friends come to visit me.

They put the money in, what they had,

not realising it would be so expensive,

and basically, by the time they'd got into the hospital and found me,

then had barely enough time to visit before they had to rush back to the car

or they would've got a ticket.

So basically, the visiting was cut short because of that, which is terrible.

When you're stuck in hospital, you want to see people

and they shouldn't be bound by timings on a car-parking meter.

The price of postcode parking

was much better for Karen 16 miles down the road at her next hospital,

Mount Vernon in Northwood.

This is the hospital where I came for my chemotherapy,

MRI scan and some dressing changes.

At Mount Vernon, you could park for free for up to 30 minutes,

but it's £3.70 for any amount of time beyond that.

And as this is where Karen came for time-consuming chemotherapy,

she was unable to take advantage of those 30 minutes of generosity.

Finally, 17 miles from Mount Vernon is St Albans Hospital,

where Karen had her original diagnosis.

Like Hemel Hempstead, St Albans had a minimum meter charge of £4

for anything under three hours.

St Albans Hospital car park

was the site of Karen's most humiliating moment.

There was a phone call literally in the morning, "Can you come now?"

I rushed out of the house and got to the hospital

and didn't have the change for the parking.

There was nowhere else to park without having the money.

I was then having to walk round the car park

to find a parking attendant

to actually, you know, humbly go to him with my problem.

"I'm sorry that I've got cancer, I'm sorry that I need to park.

"I'm sorry I haven't got the money. I have got to get in there."

I was very low at that point. Very!

Yes...

Karen's experience was typical of dozens of examples we came across

on this particular postcode lottery.

So, what is going on, who's in charge

and why do those charges vary so much?

Hospital trusts and any contractors who run their parking facilities

are allowed to charge what they like.

A recent report shows that they are doing just that and more.

For example, on top of their parking charges,

University Hospitals of Birmingham

issued a further 18,561 parking tickets.

St George's Hospital in Tooting

clamped 545 cars in the last 12 months.

But at £6 for two hours,

the hospital raking in the most costly parking charges was the Royal Free in Hampstead

where Karen spent so much of her time and money.

The report estimates that cancer sufferers

will make an average of 53 trips to hospitals during their treatment.

The charity Macmillan Cancer Support

are calling on the government and hospital trusts

to back their campaign to secure free travel and parking costs

for all cancer sufferers in the UK.

But let's leave the last word to Karen.

It makes me personally angry.

I don't see why if they can abandon it in Wales and Scotland, they can't in England.

Why are we different?

Why do we have to be penalised and made to pay?

When it comes to utilities such as gas or electric,

if you're unhappy with the service or the price you're paying,

you've got the option of shopping around for a better provider or a cheaper price.

But there is still one utility that holds a monopoly over us,

even though it was privatised as long ago as 1989.

Yep, you've guessed it.

Water.

Because no matter who you are or where you live,

your water is an inescapable postcode lottery.

For a natural resource not exactly in short supply in the UK,

why is it that some of us are paying a far heavier price for our water than others?

Because we're also not short on water companies.

There are 27 of them nation-wide.

Each serves a fixed geographical area

and each sets its own separate charges for water and sewerage bills.

And as a customer, if you want water - and we all do -

your only option is to buy it from your local supplier and at the price they set.

So the price you pay for what pours out of your tap depends on where you live.

And the price differences are a right old postcode lottery, as we're about to reveal.

In reverse order,

the UK's top-three cheapest water suppliers for 2011/12 are...

At number three, Scottish Water,

providing the whole of Scotland with an average combined water and sewerage charge

of £324 for the year.

At number two, it's the mighty Thames Water,

supplying over 8.5 million customers at an average £319.

And wading in at number one, we have Severn Trent.

So if you're lucky enough to have a Nottinghamshire postcode, pour yourself another glass

because Severn Trent are pumping it to you at just £311 a year.

And now the top-three highest-charging water companies in reverse order...

At number three, Dwr Cymru,

who are watering the whole of Wales at an average of £411 per home.

In at number two, Wessex Water are soaking up an average £428.

And this week's number one, and by far the most expensive water company in the UK,

it's South West Water,

who are floating nobody's boat at an eye-watering average of £517 per household.

They must be tapped!

ACCORDION PLAYS

South West Water's postcode patch covers Devon and Cornwall

and locals are so upset about their bills,

some of them are prepared to make a song and dance

about this landlocked and water-logged postcode lottery.

We're going to Looe in Cornwall to hear all about it.

# In south-east Cornwall We don't dwell

# Heave away, haul away

# If you want cheap water Then dig a well

# A fortune people have to pay

# The water rates, they are sky high

# Heave away, haul away

# There's lots of rain It's never dry

# A fortune people have to pay #

When shanty singer Stuart isn't keening songs of watery woe

with Mary, Brian and Andy in their folk combo Miner Quay,

he runs The Jolly Sailor Inn in West Looe.

As a businessman and a homeowner,

Stuart claims he's drowning in his water bills.

South West Water think that the average bill's in the 500 region.

My water rates for my two-bedroom flat are £700 a year

and the water rates for the business are getting on close to about £4,000 a year.

For a two-bedroom flat being 700 doesn't ring true to me.

It is a real postcode lottery.

Many of Stuart's regulars agree.

We have one of the lowest wage rates in the county

and some of the highest property rates in the county

and it just seems grossly unfair

that we're exposed to the sort of prices we're being asked to pay.

A friend of mine had a bill a few months ago for £1,200,

which is ridiculously high. Obscene.

It's difficult to run a business, especially in this climate,

and with the extra pressure of the water rates on us, as well,

I hope they won't go up any higher.

South West Water seem to be spending more and more money and I can't see where it's going.

Someone who might be able to answer that question

is Monica Read from South West Water.

The charges vary across the country,

but they're high in this region because of the sewage element.

The sewage element is two-thirds of the overall bill.

The reason is, over the last 20 years,

there's been a massive sewage clean-up operation across Devon and Cornwall.

Over £2 billion has been invested

in cleaning up over 250 raw sewage outfalls

and that's all now been addressed.

And paid for, presumably?

So, how come the charges are still almost £200 more than in London?

South West Water's profits have been ploughed back into the infrastructure.

What we're doing is, spending over £400,000 a day

on the pipes and pumps and processes that we have on the plant

in order to clean up the environment.

That's what's giving us such a huge regional advantage

in terms of environment, benefit for the economy and tourism.

Which is all well and good

but since we spoke to Monica,

South West Water have posted a six-month pre-tax profit

of £76.2 million.

Ka-ching!

Although apparently,

in the murky waters of this particular postcode lottery,

the news isn't all bad for Stuart and the cash-strapped residents of Devon and Cornwall

because South West Water have been cap-in-hand on their behalf

to the government.

We haven't got firm information, but indications are

that the government's considering a payment of up to £40 million per annum

to go to reducing the bills of South West Water customers.

It's not going to be next year because there has to be legislation,

but we're hoping to see that in the not-too-distant future.

Hang on! Just where are the government going to get this annual funding from?

Oh, yeah, got it. The taxpayer.

That's you, me and Stuart the barman at The Jolly Sailor.

Cheers. Water?!

Earlier, we brought you the story of Sarah and Levi

and their fight against the IVF postcode lottery in their hometown of Portsmouth.

Since we first filmed, there's been some interesting developments in their case.

When we contacted Portsmouth Primary Care Trust, they told us:

So imagine our surprise

when this article appeared in The Daily Telegraph a few weeks ago.

It was the story of how Donna and Dean Marshall had successfully appealed

against their local PCT's decision to deny them IVF.

Just like Sarah and Levi, Donna and Dean were on the borderline of meeting the age criteria.

And just like Levi, Dean had a child from a previous relationship.

But here's the rub...

The PCT who Donna and Dean had won their appeal against was Portsmouth.

Donna and Dean's MP had put them in touch with a lawyer

who specialises in fertility cases

and she had successfully appealed

to overturn Portsmouth's PCT's decision.

Donna and Dean are now receiving IVF on the NHS.

And we are happy to report that Sarah and Levi

are also in contact with the lawyer who won Donna and Dean's case.

Well, that's all we've got time for.

But there are plenty more scandals and some of them are stinkers!

On tomorrow's programme, we reveal the startling story of the home-care postcode lottery.

She said, "I don't think you fulfil the criteria for care any more

"and we're cutting it out."

We lift the lid on the adoption postcode lottery.

I'd contacted one of the local authorities and was really put off.

And caught in a trap,

the real truth about the speed camera postcode lottery.

I've heard that sometimes they're not actually plugged in.

Stay lucky in the postcode lottery.

If you keep watching, you'll definitely improve your chances of winning.

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