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Ofwat home > Ofwat key work areas > Competition > Water Supply Licensing

Business Customers

If you are a business customer in England or Wales you may be eligible to change your supplier. Our eligibility guidance explains how you can assess whether your premises are eligible. In brief, businesses must satisfy the following criteria:

The total estimated quantity of water likely to be supplied to your premises must not be less than 50 megalitres (50,000 cubic metres) per annum. This is the statutory threshold requirement.
Your premises must not be a household premises, that is where the main use of the premises is a home.
Your premises may only be supplied by one licensee at any time (but more than one appointed water company can supply water to your premises).
The layout and arrangement of your site must be classed as a single set of premises.

If you are interested in changing supplier you can now start discussions with potential suppliers. This website lists those who have applied for a licence (notices of applications) and those who have been granted licences (Water supply licences).

You should discuss the following with potential suppliers:

whether they can offer you any additional services;
what value they can add to your supply;
the changes they are offering to make to your arrangements;
what account management information they are offering to provide;
what standards of service they are offering and what they will do if there is a failure in the promised standard; and
who to contact about the new supplies and any problems.

Once you change your supplier to a licensee, it will take over responsibility for tasks such as billing and customer service, including day-to-day customer contact for queries and problems, advice about water usage and water conservation.

One important difference in the new supply arrangements will be that licensees will not be regulated in the way that appointed water companies are. Charges, terms and conditions of supply will be decided by agreement between you and the licensee, although the charges licensees pay to appointed water companies are directly related to the tariffs that appointed water companies charge other customers, which are still regulated.

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