Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department has issued guidance on the statutory limits that apply to the number of unplanned water supply interruptions permitted in a single locality within a calendar year.

This Government has doubled compensation payments and introduced a range of new standards to the Guaranteed Standards Scheme (GSS) which requires companies to automatically make a payment to all affected customers if it fails to meet the standards set out in the scheme. An unplanned water supply interruption would be one such example. GSS payments are triggered for each interruption, and further automatic payments incurred for a continued lack of supply.