Complaints spike but Wessex and Portsmouth continue good practice

Complaints from households to water companies across all channels rose by 10% to 222,956 in 2023/24, and those escalated to the Consumer Council for Water by 29% to 7,977. The watchdog called this “completely unacceptable”.

It said it was working to understand the root causes of the troubles, and called on Ofwat to do more to “properly hold water companies to account for poor customer service and include customer complaint volumes as part [25%] of the C-MeX financial mechanism”.

On a more positive note, fewer complaints have moved on to the final adjudication stage since CCW took over alternative dispute resolution duties in December 2023.

Billing remained the biggest driver of complaints, but within that there were more disputes about metered bills. CCW said it planned to work with the industry to establish what information customers need about water meters, and how best to deliver this.

Meanwhile, complaints to CCW about water company environmental performance soared by 217%. The watchdog called on firms to publish storm overflow delivery plans and to clearly prioritise reducing harm within these.

In terms of company performance, Wessex Water and Portsmouth Water led the pack, as the only firms to score ‘good’ on both complaint numbers and handling. At the opposite end of the scale, Thames, Yorkshire and Cambridge Water scored ‘poor’ on both metrics (see tables).