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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of water company compliance with priority services register commitments during unplanned outages.

New customer service standards came into force on 1 October, which include a standard on the priority services register. These set out the minimum standards of service companies must provide to customers registered for any of the three core priority services, one of which is delivery of an alternative water supply during any supply interruption. If, during a supply interruption, a company does not provide or is late in providing this service to the registered customer, they must automatically make a minimum £100 payment to the customer.