Harish Subherwal who owns the Spider’s Web clothes shop in Market Street was faced with a mammoth water and sewerage bill despite only having a sink and a toilet on the premises.

When faced with the prospect of paying nearly five times what a cafe pays for its water supply Harish told NI Water to pull the plug.

They arrived a few days later and cut off Harish’s supply.

“I told them to turn it off. They came out a couple of weeks ago and did it,” he said.

“They concreted over it just to make sure.”

Because he had no meter to measure how much water he was using NI Water used the value of his property to work out his water bill - this worked out at around £350 for the rest of this year and £636 next year.

Harish said: “I don’t mind paying something that’s reasonable. I won’t pay £53 a month to go to the toilet and boil the kettle.”

He told the ‘MAIL’ the two people running the store were himself and his wife and if they needed the toilet they could go round the corner to the public toilets.

He said he was happy enough with the situation as it was - paying nothing for something he doesn’t need.

“If I got a meter in then I’d be paying at least £200 in standing charges for water and sewerage and VAT. What’s the point?”

NI Water regretted that a customer felt it necessary to take such action.

A member of NI Water’s charging team explained metered customers were benefiting from the fact they were only paying for the water they’re using as well as a domestic allowance of 200 cubic metres of water (worth about £190) and no sewerage charges.

He added, however, that the domestic allowance and sewerage charges reprieve would end next year and the gap would close between the bills of metered customers and those whose bills were worked out on NAV.