Bristol tops the wholesale chart in MOSL’s new retailer and wholesaler league tables

Bristol Water put in the best overall performance of all wholesalers in the retail market in 2018/19, according to new data published by MOSL. It was the highest performing wholesaler against Market Performance Standards (MPS), and came a close second to United Utilities on Operating Performance Standards (OPS) – and was the only wholesaler to attain upper quartile position in both sets of measures.

Other strong MPS wholesale performers were Yorkshire, Anglian and Wessex, while Thames, Northumbrian, South East and Southern sat at the bottom of the table. On OPS, Affinity and South Staffs also did well, while Severn Trent, SES, South West and Thames brought up the rear.

Bristol Water’s head of wholesale services Simon Bennett (pictured) said: “I have spent the last 12 months telling everybody that we are the best performing and nicest wholesaler in the market and guess what, we really are! We set ourselves some stretching targets for both MPS and OPS and its definitely been a challenging year, but we are very proud of what we have achieved here…We will continue to keep the focus and work even harder to make sure we stay at the top in 2019/2020.”

MOSL also published data on how retailers performed against MPS in 2018/19, with three separate rankings according to size: those with greater than 5,000 supply points (SPIDs), those with fewer than 5,000 SPIDs and retailers who hold either a New Appointment and Variation (NAV) or self-supply licence. Smaller retailers performed significantly better overall than their larger peers; and self suppliers drastically outperformed NAVs. Of the large retailers, Yorkshire Water Business Services topped the chart, followed by Water2business and Affinity for Business. SES Business Water put in the poorest performance.

MOSL revealed the data in its Annual Market Performance Report, published last week. The report also set out details of the market operator’s programme of work to highlight areas requiring the most improvement in the market, and to champion the improvements it has seen to date through collaborative working between parties.

MOSL’s director of market performance, Steve Arthur, said: “This report holds trading parties to account and provides clarity and transparency to the market in the areas we are seeing wholesaler and retailer poor performance. It also calls out the benefits being seen from joint working between parties. We are confident that this is part of the step change needed in how we report on trading party performance and publish meaningful and timely data to the market.”