Spring water: retail market is open for business

DEFRA, Ofwat, MOSL, water wholesalers, water retailers and many others heralded the opening of the business retail market on Saturday. The weekend is understood to have gone smoothly as MOSL had expected: it wrote to the industry last week seeking confirmation of its understanding that no major cut over issues would present on 1 April. Meanwhile CC Water confirmed its experts were on hand and geared up to deal with any problems or enquiries, should they arise.

Around 11,000 SPIDS (c6-7000 customers) were switched in the pre-switching window, which ran from 6-23 March. SES Business Water said it had secured almost a quarter of all pre-switch requests.

Meanwhile all the remaining parts of the market architecture were switched on last week/on 1 April. This included revocation of WSLs and the designation of the Wholesale Retail Code. Ofwat has also published final principles for voluntary TPI codes of conduct.