YORKSHIRE Water came under fire this week from Ofwat's Yorkshire customer service committee for the lack of information given to people forced out of their homes due to flooding.

Members of the committee were concerned that press reports stated householders would have to pay water bills on flooded properties despite the fact they were getting council tax rebates.

Mr Richard Ackroyd, director of regulation and capital investment at Yorkshire Water, said this was not the case and the misinformation had been published because customer service personnel in a call centre had not been briefed correctly.

He said that the policy at Yorkshire Water was for customers to contact the call centres, where staff now had the correct advice.

"Each case will be looked at individually. The kind of solutions vary, but, for example, we could agree flood victims would pay the lower of the bills from either property or suspend the water charges,'' he said.

Members wanted to know why a correction had not appeared in the press, and Mr Ackroyd said the decision had been made not to release any other information, to avoid more confusion.

"We do get problems, and believe it or not there are people who will ring up and say we are going on holiday can we have our water charges waived please?'' he said.

However, Karen Holmes said this was unacceptable, because some customers would continue to pay two water bills and would not contact the call centres to check the advice.

She added that the company should get a list of flooded properties from the council and write to their owners to let them know what they should do to get a rebate on their water bills.

However, Mr Ackroyd said there was no way of finding out which customers had been affected in the floods, and he did not believe they were being offered a council tax rebate.

He said that during the flooding the disruption to customers with regard to water and waste water had been minimal.