CCWater regional chair for London and the south east, Sir Tony Redmond, told Utility Week the companies need to review their own systems to ensure they “easily slot into this new arrangement”, which goes live at the start of April.
He said the companies’ complaints procedures “need to dovetail with the new redress scheme” to make the process as smooth as possible, and that they will have to inform their customers about the new complaints system.
Redmond also stated CCWater is proposing a 12 week window for a complaint to be dealt with before it gets referred to the Water Redress Scheme.
The first six weeks will see the companies attempting to resolve a complaint themselves, before it is then passed on to CCWater to deal with over the following six weeks
If a satisfactory outcome is not reached, the Water Redress Scheme will then take over, and give the water company five days to respond to the complaint. It will then take up to twenty days to arrive at a solution, which is legally binding if it is accepted by the customer.
There are currently 123,000 complaints made to water companies, with 10,000 of these being passed on to CCWater each year.
Up to 700 of these are expected to be referred to the Water Redress Scheme, although Redmond says this should decrease annually as the water companies learn from the outcomes of the new system. “Ideally it will do itself out of a job,” he said.
Water UK head of corporate affairs Neil Dhot added the companies “have to get geared up resource wise” to deal with the short time frame to respond to the complaint being raised.
Household customers will be eligible to claim up to £10,000 in redress under the scheme, whilst commercial customers could receive up to £25,000.