Let me explain how we came to create our own Trade Effluent Charges Calculator, and make it available for free downloading.
Many leachate treatment plants, in common with trade effluent discharges from industrial and commercial sites, discharge to public sewers. That means that the discharger has to pay a Water Company charge per cubic metre discharged, and that means that to predict, or audit, Water Company charges it is necessary to carry out a reasonably complex arithmetical calculation using what is known as the “Mogden Formula” – from the name of the first sewage works in London, where it was invented.
After experiencing difficulty ourselves in finding UK trade effluent charge rates for each Water Company, and spending a long time each time calculating he resulting trade effluent charges, according to the Mogden Formula, we thought that we could do better. So, rather than setting up our own specially devised bespoke spreadsheet each time a client needs us to advise on this, we have built a special software “wizard” programme to lead users through the process step by step, and avoid possible errors. This is available from this website as a free download.
In our experience, finding the annual spreadsheet of trade effluent discharges for cost calculations, is quite a time-consuming business. The information is available on the Ofwat website, but it is buried a good few layers deep within the site, and has been moved in recent times. There is also a tantalising link to the table of charges which we found indexed by Google, and which on first glance appears to take the searcher straight to the relevant page. Unfortunately, all hope is dashed very quickly as the link leads to a copy of the prices which are about 4 years out of date!
“UK trade effluent charges for each Water Company can prove surprisingly hard to find, although they are freely available on the Ofwat website, and on the sites of each Water Company they are buried several layers deep. At best, the search is time-consuming drilling down via a number of pages on Ofwat’s site, and reasonably good search engine interrogation skills are vital if you decide to find the same data on each of the individual Water Company websites…”
To be more precise, we have produced our own convenient time saving calculator which is intended for use for trade effluent discharges cost assessments for England, Wales and Northern Ireland in respect of sewer discharges. The Free Trade Effluent Charges Calculator software will be useful for anyone making an industrial effluent discharge to a sewer anywhere where the Mogden formula is used for these calculations.
Before we provide the link to our download page, we thought that we would use this blog to explain that there will eventually most likely be two versions that we make available, a paid version and a free one.
The free version is the only version available at the time of writing, and comprises the trade effluent discharges cost calculation software alone, devoid of price data. That’s right, the free download available on this website is very useful, in our opinion, but due to the time-cost to us of updating the Water Company charges, it comes without any of the price coefficients which vary year by year (being current each year from April 1), so it is still necessary for users of the free version to search online until the relevant pricing information is found. Only once the relevant charges have been added, can the software be used to give an assessment of the likely Trade Effluent Charges for the next financial period (or a check on the bills invoiced in the case of Water Company customers auditing the Water Company’s bills).
Clearly, it would be very useful to the user of this software for it to include a full set of up to date charge data, and currently we believe that at least 50% of the time needed to complete a trade effluent discharges cost calculation will be that spent on searching down the necessary data.
Your Free Trade Effluent Charges Calculator is Available Here Now!
Our intention is that if there are sufficient downloads of the free version of the trade effluent discharges cost calculator (Free Trade Effluent Charges Calculator) to demonstrate that there is sufficient demand to make it economically viable, we will produce a version which will include this information. This will be annually updated for each England, Wales and Northern Ireland Water Company, by us and updates circulated to all buyers. It will be necessary, to recover our costs in producing the regular updates, so we will make a charge for this in the “Premium Edition”.
Click here for your Free Trade Effluent Charges Calculator Download.
We hope this explains the difference between the free and (forthcoming) paid-for versions of this software. We will ask for the email address of each person downloading this software. This is for your benefit, to enable us to email you when there are updates, so please provide your best email address, one which you look at regularly. And, do send us comments to help us make this software better! Thanks.
