Paying for water: water pricing and equity in England and Wales

Over the past three decades, the business of water supply in England and Wa les has been gradually transforming from the supply of a service to citizen s, to the sale of a commodity to customers. The paper provides a genealogy of concepts of efficiency and equity in water regulation over the past thir ty years, prior to evaluating the implications for water consumers of one a spect of this process - the shift away from policies prioritizing inter- an d intra-regional equalization (implying a principle of social equity) towar ds policies prioritizing economic efficiency (implying a principle of econo mic equity) in water charging. In closing, alternatives to the current arra ngements for domestic consumers are proposed.