Business water for hotels, pubs and restaurants in Scotland

Most Scottish businesses have a metered supply. You pay a fixed charge set by meter size and a volume charge for the water you use. Scottish Water’s business charging page explains that the waste water charge assumes 95% of the water you use goes back to the public sewer.

Two charges are based on rateable value (RV) rather than use. Property drainage pays for taking surface water away from your premises. And if your supply is unmeasured, your water and waste water charges are worked out from RV as well.

On top of the wholesale charges sits the retail fee, which covers billing, reads and customer service. That’s the only part that differs between providers. For the 2026/27 wholesale picture, see our Scottish tariffs guide.

Pull out one bill per site and note whether it’s metered, the meter size and the RV used for drainage. Those three items explain most of the total.

Scotland’s non-domestic revaluation took effect on 1 April 2026, using rental values at 1 April 2025. RVs are set by the Scottish Assessors, who are independent of government. Because drainage and unmeasured charges use RV, the revaluation feeds straight into water bills.

Hospitality saw some of the biggest moves. The Scottish Government’s statistics show:

These are sector averages, so your own premises could have moved more or less. Where a bed and breakfast has a domestic part, the assessor separates it out.

Here’s what that means on a bill

This example is illustrative. A pub pays £800 a year in property drainage. If its RV rose by the 14% pub average and the rate per pound of RV stayed the same, the drainage charge would go up by about £112. A self-catering unit paying £200 with a 40% RV increase would see about £80 more.

Check that the RV your provider bills on matches the current valuation roll. If the site doesn’t drain surface water to the public sewer at all, our Scottish drainage guide explains how to challenge the charge.

Scottish Water draws a clear line here. Its trade effluent page says discharges from hotels, caravan sites and restaurants aren’t considered trade effluent, so a typical kitchen’s waste water doesn’t need a trade effluent consent.

Some hospitality activities do sit inside the system. Scottish Water’s trade effluent guide says hotel laundries and swimming pool backwashes are normally covered by a Letter of Authorisation, which is used for small, low-risk discharges of under 2 m³ a day. Applications go through your licensed provider, and Scottish Water won’t issue a consent until one is appointed.

Grease is where kitchens get into trouble. Scottish Water’s leaflet on commercial kitchens makes the owner responsible for clearing blockages in private drains, and says it will recover the cost of clearing a public sewer from a business found to have caused the blockage. Its practical advice runs like this:

• never pour cooking oil down a sink, and scrape pans into a container before washing
• if you use a grease trap, it should be at least twice the size of the sink draining into it, emptied regularly and refilled with cold water
• keep dishwasher waste out of the grease trap, because the hot water melts the grease and carries it on
• avoid food macerators, which Scottish Water doesn’t recommend
• store waste oil in a sealed container for a registered waste company to collect

Put those points on the kitchen wall and include them in new starter training.

Seasonal businesses still pay through the quiet months. WICS says the vacant property exemption ended in April 2017. On a metered site that’s closed, Scottish Water’s charges scheme still applies the fixed charges and drainage, with volume charges only if the meter records use.

If your premises is unmeasured, the RV-based charge doesn’t care whether you’re busy. Scottish Water’s charges scheme says it’ll fit a meter to an existing unmeasured supply at no additional charge when your provider asks, unless installation is impractical or the cost is excessive. You can’t switch back once a meter is fitted, so compare your RV-based charge against realistic metered use first.

Meter size matters in the other direction. A hotel or venue sized for festival weeks or peak summer may be on a bigger meter than it needs the rest of the year, and fixed charges rise with meter size. Data is the way to judge that. Scottish Water allows data loggers from accredited installers, and Clearsight can arrange AMR loggers for customers.

Scottish Water is also replacing older business meters with smart meters on a rolling programme. Its FAQs say there’s no charge for installation, you can’t opt out, and it’s working with providers to make the data available to customers in future.

A holiday cottage or country hotel might take its water from a spring, well or borehole instead of Scottish Water. That’s a private water supply. The Drinking Water Quality Regulator says larger supplies, and those with a commercial activity, are classed as regulated supplies, and the Water Intended for Human Consumption (Private Supplies) (Scotland) Regulations 2017 are enforced by local authorities, which keep a register of every private supply in their area.

If you let holiday accommodation on a private supply, DWQR says you must display a notice telling guests the water comes from one. Guests with concerns go to the local council’s environmental health team.

A private water supply isn’t billed by a licensed provider, but your waste water may still reach the public sewer. WICS says drainage charges apply where any part of a property drains to the public sewer, including a septic tank overflow. So a rural site can have a sewerage or drainage SPID even with no Scottish Water supply.

If you’re not sure what a rural site is connected to, ask your provider to confirm which supply points are registered there.

Victorian hotels, tenement pubs and converted steadings share a weakness. Long pipe runs, old fittings and unheated spaces make leaks likely and hard to spot. A cistern left running in a closed-off wing can go unnoticed for weeks.

A logger shows the overnight baseline, which should be close to zero when nobody’s using water. If it isn’t, something’s running. Scottish Water owns the meter, but it says you’ll pay the cost of replacing it if it’s damaged by frost, so insulate meters and pipes in cold spaces.

After a long closure, Scottish Water points businesses to Water UK’s advice on restoring drinking water supplies after inactivity. Read it before reopening for the season.

If you’d like a fuller look, our water audit checks bills and how a site uses water.

We’d start with each site’s address and SPID, then check whether it’s metered, what size the meter is and which RV is being used for drainage and any unmeasured charges. For seasonal businesses, we’d look at whether the meter size fits the year. Then we’d ask our panel of licensed retailers to quote, with the wholesale charges shown once and each provider’s retail fee and billing terms underneath.

Want a quote? An address and SPID are enough to compare business water suppliers.