Water bills rising up the political agenda – and dominating my current workload
Today it was announced that the Secretary of State for the Environment has written to all water companies urging them to endeavour to keep bills down in the next Price Review period running from 2015-2020. Interestingly the actual text of the letter is not on the DEFRA web site [see here] but the “Guardian” has published it [see here].
The timing of this intervention is both obvious and odd. It is obvious because clearly the Government feels that it has to be seen to be making the right noises in the face of the Labour Opposition making successful running on the cost of living issue. It is odd in that, for the last year and a half, water companies have been working up business plans for the next Price Review period and these have to be submitted to the independent regulator Ofwat by 2 December, so there is little companies can do now to respond to the Government intervention even if they wanted to do so.
For the last year and a half, I have been chairing the Customer Challenge Group of South East Water and we have to submit our views on the company’s business plan for 2015-2020 to Ofwat by 2 December. Each water company has a CCG which will be doing the same thing.
So, for the past two months, I have been drafting and redrafting our report to pull together all our discussions with the company over the last year and half and comment on a very full and complex business plan. We are currently on Draft 4 which runs to 60 pages.
Roll on Christmas ….