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Standards of service
At present, only business customers who use large amounts of water are eligible to choose who supplies them. Most water and sewerage customers in England and Wales cannot switch supplier in search of better service or lower prices. A range of measures are in place to protect customers.
Each company must follow:
- the guaranteed standards scheme– a statutory scheme that provides compensation in the event of service failure;
- its complaints procedure – this tells you how and where to complain and how the company will deal with your complaint;
- a number of codes of practice, including its customer code of practice and other codes covering domestic leakage, debt recovery and pipe laying; and
- its published charges scheme – this outlines the charges the company has to apply for different groups of customer.
All companies are required to have complaints procedures and codes of practice. These must be approved by us.
In addition to these safeguards, we use our role in regulating the water and sewerage sectors to drive improvements in service. We do this by monitoring each company’s performance, comparing service across the industry and supporting best practice. We also take action against any company that fails to provide the level of service customers expect.
