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| |  Letters to Managing Directors |
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MD183
TO MANAGING DIRECTORS OF ALL
WATER AND SEWERAGE COMPANIES
AND WATER ONLY COMPANIES 20 December 2002
FORUM FOR DEVELOPING COMMON CARRIAGE
In MD177, dated 27 March 2002, we asked for your views on the usefulness of establishing an access code forum to encourage companies and entrants to co-operate in access code development. We also asked for views on how such a forum might be established and run, what issues it should address and what should be its terms of reference. We advised you that we would provide feedback on responses later in the year.
Seventeen organisations provided comments on a forum. Of these, thirteen agreed that a forum would be a good idea and four gave no view. But only six respondents provided any detailed comments.
The Government has subsequently announced that a Water Bill, including proposals on competition, will be introduced in this Parliamentary Session, sometime in the New Year.
Since MD177 was issued substantial preparatory work has been done on the draft Water Bill proposals, which included a new specific framework for common carriage and wholesale supplies. As a result, we will need to carry out further detailed work on how to develop and implement the new regime. We envisage that this process will be informed by industry working groups that will discuss and develop ideas based on their experience. We do not therefore intend to set up a forum now for developing common carriage, but to subsume it into this wider process.
As the details of the legislation become clearer and the Water Bill progresses through Parliament, we will set out in more detail how we would like to include the industry in its development and implementation.
PHILIP FLETCHER
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