Currently only five water companies – Affinity Water; South East Water; Thames Water; United Utilities; and Wessex Water – are part of the taskforce to help develop the AIM scheme.
AIM was originally designed to provide a financial incentive and penalty scheme to the water companies but a lack of available data meant Ofwat did not introduce the financial incentives for this price control period.
This has been pushed back to the next price control period and for 2015-20 reputational incentives have been introduced while data quality issues are resolved.
The regulator has acknowledged that to resolve the data issues with AIM “would require significant effort” but added it is committed to working with the water companies and other stakeholders, including the Environment Agency, to resolve them in 2015.
Ofwat has called on the companies, including Welsh Water and Dee Valley Water – which are not affected by the scheme – to join the taskforce and present solutions to overcome the lack of data.
The AIM taskforce has also been asked to: propose the requirements that all companies will need to report their performance against; confirm a list of the environmentally sensitive sites; and to present options to the regulator on how the reputational incentive would work.
The taskforce will also provide Ofwat with options on how the financial incentives for AIM can be introduced and operated between 2020-2025.
The members of the group are jointly responsible for appointing an independent chair, coordinating taskforce meetings, and producing key notes from the meetings.
The regulator has stated the taskforce will operate for as long as necessary to help the reputational AIM start to operate in practice.