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Today each water company in England and Wales submits its draft business plan to Ofwat, setting out in detail its proposals for investment to maintain long-term, high quality water services to consumers that represent value for money. The plans set out each company's initial view of what it needs to do to maintain its assets, improve services to customers and deal with its impact on the environment. Each company also sets out how much this might cost customers in their water bills. Ofwat last year asked companies to produce 25-year plans for maintaining and developing services. Each company has been challenged to set its five year business plan in the longer term context, demonstrating how it will deal with issues such as climate change, sustainability and meeting consumer expectations. Ofwat's Chief Executive Regina Finn said: "This is the start of the process of making decisions on how each company proposes to provide value for money, long-term, high quality water services to its customers. "We will now examine draft business plans in detail, checking the proposed level of service and investment. We will make sure each plan includes everything we expect, takes account of concerns expressed by customers, and does so as efficiently as possible. "Final decisions will not be made until autumn 2009. Between now and then we will be working intensively to provide the best possible basis for those decisions, including seeking customers views and carrying out detailed and thorough analysis of these plans." Each company will place a summary of its draft business plan on its web site. We will put links to these from Ofwat's web site - www.ofwat.gov.uk – as the plans become available. We will publish a summary of the plans and the issues raised at the end of September. Ofwat will meet each company in October and November this year to provide them with detailed feedback - which they can use to produce final business plans in the spring of next year. The regulator has also commissioned, with stakeholder partners, a major research project to find out what customers think of the proposals included in the plans. Notes to Editors: 1. The Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat) is the economic regulator of water and sewerage companies in England and Wales. It exercises its powers in a way that it judges will protect the interests of consumers, promote value and safeguard future water and sewerage services by allowing efficient companies to carry out their functions properly, and finance them. MEDIA ENQUIRIES TO OFWAT PRESS OFFICE ON: 0121 625 1442/1416/1496. Out of hours enquiries to: 0121 625 1300.  | ||||||
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