MILLIONS of households will be hit with another rise to water bills yet companies were told today they cannot increase them as much as they wanted.

Five water firms, Anglian Water, Northumbrian Water, South East Water, Southern Water and Wessex Water, will be allowed to raise an additional £463 million in revenue.

This is short of the £2.7 billion they had asked for, following a review by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) watchdog.

Yet the extra funding is still expected to result in an average increase of 2.2 per cent in bills for customers of the five water firms.

And this is on top of the huge 24 per cent average hike they had already been granted by water regulator Ofwat.

A public body representing water consumers said the bill increases were “still more than what many customers can afford.”

Consumer Council for Water head Mike Keil said: “We’ve seen almost a tripling in complaints brought to us about the affordability of water bills in the past year and further increases will add to the worries of some struggling households.”

He added that customers should be given rights to challenge price increases.