Ofwat has insisted wholesalers in the business retail market must step up the quality of service they provide to retailers.
The regulator has published a “call for inputs” to assess the issues which are having the biggest impact on wholesaler performance.
Intelligence gathered as part of the review will align with existing initiatives, and feed into the work of existing groups including the retailer wholesaler group.
There is a consensus among retailers that there is a lack of effective reputational and financial incentives for wholesalers to deliver high quality services to the market.
Many retailers also experience problems and associated cost impact from dealing with a wide variety of wholesaler policy approaches.
Ofwat said it is aware that several industry-led initiatives are planned or already in progress to improve interactions between wholesalers and retailers.
However, there is a concern that these initiatives may not deliver the improvements in performance and service at the pace of change that is needed.
The call for inputs follows work by the regulator to identify some of the drivers behind market frictions identified in its “open for business” report, published in July.
These frictions included: poor aggregate performance of wholesalers against market and operational performance standards; poor communication between wholesalers and retailers; and poor quality of data provided by wholesalers in the central market operating system (CMOS), which has resulted in problems for retailers.