Honorary Research Fellow

Contact Details

• Email: prh@le.ac.uk

Biography

As an academic economist, after studying at Nottingham, Brown and Southampton universities I taught and researched at the Universities of Lancaster (1964-67) and Leicester (Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Economics over 1967-2000, then part-time tutor in Biology and Geography over 2000-05). I specialised, mostly sequentially, in macro-, monetary, public utility, regulatory and environmental (especially water) economics, and lectured/tutored over 1989 to 2005 in the MSc in Natural Resource Management and its successor, the MSc in Sustainable Management of Natural Resources.

Research Interests

My current major interest arises from the fact that numerous investigations have shown economic instruments (EIs) – e.g., prices, taxes, subsidies and rights trading – to have a potentially crucial role to play in protecting and managing the environment. However, one of the major problems in putting EIs into practice is to devise instruments which will satisfy simultaneously society’s economic, environmental and social objectives. With the public water supply as an example, I have in the last twenty years spent much time researching how developed countries do and may better pursue this troika of objectives.

The first two are not, at least in principle, difficult to reconcile. I developed the relevant economics in detail for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1987 (see Key Publications, below), and revisited this study in 1999 for the same organisation but with much greater emphasis on the environment. As long as the economic concepts of ‘full-cost pricing’ and ‘marginal cost pricing’ are re-interpreted to include full allowances for environmental costs and benefits (which thus need to be subject to monetary valuation), then economic and environmental objectives may be pursued hand in hand. But all too often the resulting tariff changes – usually a switch to metering and higher volumetric charging rates - would be seriously detrimental to some of those on low incomes, in that household bills would generally increase significantly for households of above-average size.

And that social consequence tends to lead to a large political problem, all too often holding up the adoption of pricing policies which would greatly benefit the environment. I examined in 2003, again for the OECD, how the developed world attempts to deal with this social issue of affordability in the case of household water services (see below), highlighting tariff structures which offered a distinction between essential and discretionary (or ‘luxury’) water consumption. Such social tariffs could probably be applied in the UK. It now seems that this dichotomy may be also applicable to other household services (e.g., energy, transport) which make, directly or indirectly, heavy demands on the environment, so that it is possible that a general ‘model’ for the socially acceptable provision of necessitous household services which impact upon the environment can be derived.

More recently, in 2007, I have reported – in association for the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) in Bristol – to WWF-UK on the various detailed social tariffs which (i) have been and (ii) could be used in the UK to reconcile social and environmental objectives in the provision of domestic energy and water utility services. The conclusion reached was that increasing block tariffs (IBTs), in which the price at the margin increases the more a household consumes, offered the best way forward, since they both presented an unambiguous message about sustainability and, for water, by relating the cheaper ‘first’ block of use to the size of the household, provided a measure of equity which was absent from orthodox standard metered tariffs. The report about water services can be accessed on the WWF-UK website. 

External Activities

• Member, Watersave network
• Member, Management Committee, Leicester SHARP (Shelter Housing Aid and Research Project)
• Board Member, STRIDE (SHARP Training, Recycling and Income Development Enterprise)
• (past) Specialist Adviser to House of Commons Select Committees (1997 and 2001)
• Member of Independent Commission of Inquiry into Water Supply in Yorkshire in 1995 (1996)

Publications

Herrington, P (2007)  Waste Not, Want Not?  Water Tariffs for Sustainability. WWF-UK, Godalming.

Herrington, P (2006)  Critical review of Relevant Research Concerning the Effects of Charging and Collection Methods on Water Demand, Different Customer Groups and Debt. UK Water Industry Research, London.

Herrington, P. R. (2006)  The Economics of Water Demand Management. In: Butler, D. and Memon, F. A. (eds.) Water Demand Management. International Water Association, London.

Herrington, P et al. (2003)  Social Issues in the Provision and Pricing of Water Services. OECD, Paris.

Herrington, P (1999)  Household Water Pricing in OECD Countries. OECD, Paris.

Herrington, P (1996)  Climate Change and the Demand for Water. HMSO, London.

Herrington, P (1987)  Pricing of Water Services. OECD, Paris.