Castle Water chief calls for retailer performance on switch blocking to be published

Castle Water chief executive, John Reynolds, has called on Ofwat and MOSL to publish data on the percentage of attempted switches blocked by each business water retailer.

In a new blog, Reynolds asserted that anonymised data from MOSL shows that two retailers block around two-thirds of all attempted switches by their customers to new retailers, against a market average of 25%. He said in Castle’s case specifically: “Since market opening in 2017, two retailers have blocked over 75% of attempted switches to Castle and five have blocked over 50%. We have been told by certain retailers that they do this automatically. This is a market-wide issue.”

Reynolds said: “I want customers to be able to make an informed choice of their business water retailer, and this is crucial information for them.”