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 considered a statutory automatic redress mechanism for consumers who lose access to Alternative Dispute Resolution due to regulatory or administrative failure.

All previous complaints that were being handled by the Dispute Resolution Ombudsman on behalf of the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) before the withdrawal of CCW’s adjudication service were progressed to conclusion.

Under the new arrangement, if a customer complaint has not been resolved through discussion with their water company or through support from CCW, customers should be referred by their water company to the water company’s independent adjudication service. Customers will continue to benefit from the same protections and safeguards in place under the previous arrangement. Those contracted to provide this independent service for water companies will provide impartial decisions until the new Water Ombudsman is established.

The new Ombudsman will strengthen customer protections in the water sector by providing an impartial and legally binding dispute resolution service in the sector, in line with other regulated sectors. This will ensure that vulnerable customers and their complaints are properly safeguarded.