Following an initiative from Britain’s government late in 2014, the water sector quickly established a scheme to compare the performances of companies relating to the delivery of infrastructure.
The second performance report published in October 2015 stated that further initiatives would include a new industry system to measure customer satisfaction. This initiative will be launched in 2016 and will include the overhaul of the charging regime, made possible by the Water Act 2014.
The established Developer Services scheme will publish its third quarterly report I January 2016, and it will note that companies have been hard at work in an attempt to narrow the performance gap between the worst and best performers.
In the next stage, company reporting will be audited; the scope of this audit is still under discussion between all interested parties, including self-lay operators and representatives of developers.
Water companies started creating a new system for the measuring of customer satisfaction with water companies’ performance in developer services early in 2015, and that qualitative report is set to complement the quantitative analysis done – the launch is planned for 2016.
What may be even more important to some than these welcome initiatives, as significant as they may be, is the expectation that there will be a complete overhaul of the rules and regulations governing the charges for new infrastructure.
The existing regime (within Water Industry Act 1991) has received some rather heavy criticism from a diverse range of interested parties, but opportunity has arisen for reform under the Water Act 2014.
During September a number of workshops, organised by Water UK, were held and attended by industry representatives, who also participated in the work that Defra is doing in developing guidance to shape the new charging regime that is to be implemented by Ofwat.
The new regime will be constituted with the input from all in the water sector with Water UK and its members all contributing their expertise with the overall aim of improving the delivery of new housing.
