Lack of Open Water website update drags good progress on flourishing market

(by Karma Loveday)

The Strategic Panel has highlighted resource constraints at Ofwat as the reason behind the delivery of three actions in its Roadmap to a flourishing market being jeopardised.

The most senior body in the non-household retail market has published a progress report on the delivery of of the 34 actions identified in its September 2024 Roadmap – a comprehensive plan to enable a well-functioning, competitive market. Using a RAG rating, this showed that over a third of actions (13) have been delivered, and a further 18 are progressing on schedule (see chart). Notable progress has been made in areas such as customer protections, operational performance and market resilience.

All three actions not marked as green sit with Ofwat, with the regulator’s current resource limitations cited as reasons for under-delivery. The red-rated action is to update the Open Water website. The Strategic Panel said no substantive improvements had been made, and “no forward plan has been provided”. This is serious, as “its stalling is the single largest point of failure for Outcome A” – this relates to the Roadmap’s desired customer service outcomes of choice, enhanced customer service and cost efficiency.

The two amber-rated actions concern developing a wholesaler ‘fairness framework’ and setting up a sandbox to support innovation. The Strategic Panel said the former remains on track for delivery in 2026, “though continued engagement will be important to mitigate delivery risk”. On the latter, MOSL has produced a paper to help define how a sandbox for the market could work, in order to assist Ofwat to make progress. Non-delivery is impeding Outcome A and Outcome C, which concerns the good environmental outcomes of water efficiency, water security and reduced demand for wastewater services.

Despite these three actions of concern, good progress is being made on delivery of the Roadmap. In the September 2025 stocktake, six actions had been delivered, 23 were on schedule and five were at risk (none were red).

The Strategic Panel will use the findings to inform an updated Roadmap, which is expected to be published later this year.

In parallel, the Panel published its annual report for 2025-26. This highlighted significant progress across the market over the past year, including implementation of the reformed Market Performance Framework, improvements to customer protections, the launch of Phase 1 of the Smart Meter Read Hub, advances in shared data initiatives, and new work to support water efficiency.