About Consultation
In our emerging strategy for regulating water and wastewater companies in England and Wales, we highlighted the need to find new ways of driving transformational change in the water and wastewater sector.
We believe that the adoption of innovative approaches is key to delivering long-term resilience and great customer service at an affordable price, and the sector will need to step up and increase innovation in order meet the strategic challenges it faces in a cost-effective and sustainable way. We also want to see companies work more effectively together and with their supply chain to better tackle these challenges.
In this document, we explore options for customer-funded interventions designed to drive innovation to benefit customers in the longer-term. In particular, we are proposing to make up to £200m available for innovation activities for the period 2020-2025, for example through the introduction of an innovation competition or an end-of-period roll-out reward. We also seek views on a range of additional policy options for encouraging companies to work together to drive innovation in the sector and to ensure that regulation is effectively facilitating innovation.
How to respond
We welcome your response to this consultation by close of business on 20 September 2019.
Respondents are strongly encouraged to provide details of the evidence and data in their responses, which support their positions to enable us to understand more fully the basis on which those conclusions have been reached.
There is no obligation to respond to all of the questions but we would appreciate if respondents could use the appropriate question numbers in submissions to enable easier analysis.
Please email your response to [email protected] or post them to:
Innovation consultation
Ofwat
21 Bloomsbury Street
London
WC1B 3HF