Water customers have said bills represent satisfactory value for money, yet are simultaneously deemed to be unfair.
Consumers of all water companies in England and Wales rated the fairness of their bills as below average, while all but three companies were ranked as above average for value for money.
Water watchdog CCW’s annual Water Mark assessment for 2022-23 ranks bill affordability at all companies bar South West and Bournemouth as ‘above average’ for affordability, although only Cambridge Water’s affordability ranking was ‘good’.
Awareness of additional services was poor across all companies, which is consistent with Ofwat and CCW’s previous findings that showed consumers were not aware of priority services or affordability and debt support.
There was little year-on-year change across all water and water and sewerage companies in performance or how customers perceive services. Over the four years CCW has graded performance, there have been persistent areas in need of improvement.
The snapshot of consumer sentiment towards their provider coincided with Ofwat urging companies to prove to companies that business plan proposals for 2025-30 represent value for money.
The regulator worked with CCW to develop opportunities for customers to feed back to their company on priorities and how bill money should be spent.
The proposals for PR24 will be presented at Your water, your say meetings, which, together with stakeholder feedback on Ofwat’s website, will inform the regulator’s draft determinations of plans it is due to publish by June 2024.
Bill hikes of an average of c32% and as high as 65% have been put forward to undertake capital investment programmes that dwarf previous asset management periods. A 271% increase in net expenditure has been laid out for 2025-30, which is subject to regulatory scrutiny and approval.
Although customer feedback has been an essential part of garnering approval for plans at previous price controls, this is the first time the public scrutiny meetings are a compulsory part of the process.