Water Companies: Finance

(asked on 28th November 2022) - View Source

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 is taking to increase the (a) transparency and (b) standardisation of incumbent water companies’ bulk supply and discharge tariffs.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 9th December 2022

The Government is committed to ensuring that the water industry offers a stable, predictable and transparent charging regime for bulk supply and discharge.

We updated our charging guidance to Ofwat in 2016 and provided further supplementary guidance to the regulator in 2018. It can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/water-industry-charging-guidance-to-ofwat

Ofwat, the independent economic regulator for the water industry in England and Wales, must have regard to our guidance in their regulation of water companies in England. They set out how they regulate bulk supply and discharge charges in their charging rules. Ofwat's charging rules were updated last year, taking effect in April 2022. These updates simplified the publishing deadlines for charges and introduced a new requirement on English water companies to use standardised terms and worked examples in their charging arrangements for developer services.

Bulk supply and discharge charging guidance is a devolved matter in Wales and Scotland. Welsh government’s charging guidance to Ofwat can be found at Water charging guidance | GOV.WALES

Scottish government’s charging guidance is issued directly by Scottish Water, and can be found at Microsoft Word - Part 1 Wholesale Charges Scheme 2022-23 - Non TC - Jan 4.2% (scottishwater.co.uk)

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