Water meters are great where the property supply (not mains) pipes are short and not vulnerable. Our previous house had a supply pipe  500 metres long under farmland which was at risk of being ploughed up. This could have been disasterous if the supply had been metered!
Our present house (2 years old) has a meter and stopcock on the wall which have already frozen up once this year. There has to be a better way of providing meters