Anglian top and Thames bottom of SIM

Anglian Water retained first place and Portsmouth Water second place in the Service Incentive Mechanism (SIM) league table for 2018-19. Meanwhile Thames remained at the bottom of the table and the industry wide performance declined slightly.

Ofwat reported first place Anglian increased its score from 88.3 in 2017-18 to 90 out of 100. Thames’ score dropped by over three points since last year from 78.4 to 75.

Under the SIM financial incentive regime (-12% and +6% of residential retail revenue, based on the relative average scores for each company), Anglian earned a £16m reward and Thames a £100m penalty (which will be returned to customers).

The average SIM score fell to 84.4 in 2018-19 from 84.5 in 2017-18, after three years of rises. However Ofwat highlighted year on year improvements especially from Southern Water and Welsh Water.

This is the final year that Ofwat will use the SIM scoring system for customer service. From 2020 it is switching to the new measure, C-MeX, which will set an even higher bar.