Access to water meters

Some of Hunter Water’s business activities require either our staff or contractors working on our behalf to enter our customers’ property.  As explained in our Customer Contract, we have the right to enter property without notice for the purposes of reading the water meter, testing of the meter, meter inspection and maintenance or replacement of the water meter.

Each customer has the responsibility to ensure Hunter Water has reasonable access to the water meter at their property.  Customers who are building or redeveloping their property should consider this when determining the position of fences, gates and other barriers to ensure the meter can still be accessed by us.

If you have not provided reasonable access to your meter, we may bill your account based on an estimate of your usage and we may also recover the cost of the attempted meter reading.  If you have not provided reasonable access to the meter for a reading on two or more occasions, we may:

• relocate the meter at your cost
• seek access at a time suitable to you (which may incur an additional fee)
• make other arrangements with you (such as providing a key for access)

If we cannot reach an agreement with you regarding ongoing access for reading of the meter we may impose an imputed service and usage charge.  Having these charges applied to your account does not affect our right to continue to pursue the meter access issue.