Businesses will soon see their water bills rise.

Ofwat has today announced it will temporarily increase price caps in the business retail market by 0.49%.

The change in the prices aims to allow retailers to share some of the bad debt costs caused in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic.

Bad debt costs relate to money or invoices owed and are unlikely to be recovered.

Georgina Mills, Business Retail Market Director at Ofwat, said: “During the pandemic, we have implemented measures to continue to protect the interests of business customers.

“Implementing this small and temporary upward adjustment to the business retail price caps aims to protect business customers, including by maintaining strong incentives on retailers to keep bad debt costs as low as possible.”