(Bloomberg) -- Thames Water is seeking to increase customer bills by 56% to fund its five-year spending plan, according to The Times newspaper.

The troubled utility’s original business plan had envisaged a 40% increase in bills but Thames now sees a need for a steeper increase, taking annual bills near £700 for its 16 million customers, The Times said without saying where it got the information from.

Thames had been slated to release the update to its business plan on Friday, but it was postponed until next week. The Times reported that the plan has been privately submitted to the regulator Ofwat. 

A spokesperson for Thames Water declined to comment.

The company is required to submit its plan to Ofwat as part of a five-yearly price review process, known as PR24. An Ofwat draft decision, scheduled for June 12, is seen by investors as a key indicator for the future of Thames.

The highly indebted water utility, which supplies a quarter of people in England, is in crisis after its parent company Kemble Water Holdings Ltd. last month refused to inject any more money into the business, blaming restrictive regulation from Ofwat. Kemble then defaulted on its debt a week later after failing to make an interest payment.

(Updates with company comment in fourth paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected the name of company in headline.)

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