Ofwat home > Publications > Price reviews & interim determinations > Interim determinations 2000-2005

Mr C Mellor
Managing Director
Anglian Water Services Limited
Anglian House
Ambury Road
Huntingdon
Cambridgeshire
PE29 3NZ

15 November 2000

INTERIM DETERMINATION – provisional response

On 28 September you made an application for an interim determination of your company's price limits under Part IV of Condition B of the licence. You cited two changes, namely greater numbers of customers taking up the free meter option and the cryptosporidium monitoring requirements placed upon your company by the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI). Your estimates of the effect of these changes on your costs and revenues were set down in a report attached to your application and are summarised in Annex A.The Reporter, Jeremy Long of Binnie Black & Veatch submitted his report on your application on 13 October.

On 13 October Ofwat issued a counter notice under Paragraph 15 of Condition B of the licence in order to take account of planned quality enhancement work that had been funded in price limits but was now no longer required by the DWI.

We have completed our initial assessment of your application in the light of all the information available to us. Our approach and our initial findings, judgements and conclusions are summarised in Annex B attached to this letter. We will provide you with some explanatory notes expanding on Annex B in the next few days. Our provisional views on the impact of the changes on your costs and revenues are set down in the summary table (Annex A).

We find that our initial assessment of the total impact of the three items on your costs and revenues is not sufficient to exceed the materiality threshold set down in Condition B of your licence. In these circumstances we would find no basis for changing the price limits set in November 1999.

We are inviting written representations from you on this draft determination of your application. Please could these be with us by the close of Monday 27 November. We shall be meeting you on Tuesday 5 December to hear first hand your representations.

We would be grateful for written representations from other interested parties by the close of Wednesday 6 December.

We shall make our final determination of your application by no later than the end of December consistent with the timetable set out in Condition B.

We are placing this draft determination in the Ofwat library at the same time as announcing our decision to the London Stock Exchange.

This letter and enclosures has been copied to Alan Davis (DETR), Michael Rouse (DWI), Robert Runcie (Environment Agency), Roger Corbett, (Chairman of Eastern CSC), Jim Gardner (Chairman of Northumbria CSC) and to all your local Members of Parliament and Members of the European Parliament.

PHILIP FLETCHER