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by Karma Loveday

CCW recommends a single national social tariff as part of its Affordability Review

A single national social tariff was one of ten recommendations from CCW last week when it published the findings of the Affordability Review Defra and the Welsh Government commissioned it to undertake last year.


CCW said its favoured funding route would be through taxes, but failing that the tariff should be paid for from a central pot across England and Wales funded through an imposed, rather than consensual, customer cross-subsidy. CCW calculated this would add £11 to the average bill but that this would likely come down to about £6 a year once bad-debt spend, the phase out of other customer support and other measures were offset.


The objective would be to eradicate water poverty, defined as customers spending 5% or more of their household income after housing costs on water bills.


The watchdog scoped out four ideas on how the scheme might be structured: fixed bill or fixed percentage reductions; bill caps; or a free block of water, each for all eligible customers. It said this would need to be worked through collaboratively.


The ten Affordability Review recommendations are broad and wide-ranging, taking in everything from debt to data sharing, and communications to making processes more customer friendly. They encompass measures from those that can be taken immediately, such as improving access to existing help, to those that will take some time to action, including overhauling social tariff policy.


CCW chief executive Emma Clancy said collectively, they amount to a “simpler, better, fairer system” that should ensure customers have “one less thing to worry about”.

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