31/10/07
Water UK comments on 'Complaint Handling in the Water Industry in England and Wales - 2006-07 report' published today by the Consumer Council for Water (CCWater).
Today's report shows a 30% increase in written complaints reported by water companies to Ofwat and the Consumer Council for Water.
Increases in complaints are always regrettable but water companies analyse and learn from all the complaints they receive. The increase reported is for a year that saw most customers paying above-inflation price rises for the second year running and in Southern England one of the most severe droughts of the past century.
The detailed analysis supplied by CCWater needs to be treated with caution. Water companies have cooperated fully with CCWater to produce useful information. So it is disappointing that in its press release CCwater has chosen not to mention that:
• this information has been collected for the first time and is not entirely comparable between companies
• the data collection process was rushed - earlier year data are particularly unreliable.
However Water UK is pleased to note that:
• companies dealt with 99.5% of complaints through their own processes without the involvement of CCWater
• companies dealt with nearly 90% of complaints satisifactorily at the first stage
• the total number of complaints is tiny when set against the scale of the service they provide (see note below).
Ends
For more information please contact:
Jeanne Golay, Economic Regulation Adviser
020 7344 1808 or
Barrie Clarke, Director of Communication
020 7344 1804
Note
In 2006-07 water companies in England and Wales supplies clean water and sewerage services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to 22 million bill-paying customers.
It is unclear from CCWater's report whether the complaints received-figure includes multiple complaints from single customers. If they were all from different customers just over 1% complained and 0.006% of complaints were referred to CCWater.
