Government watchdog asked to investigate if process for setting water bills was unlawful

We have filed an official complaint about the process used to decide how much customers pay for their water bills as part of the water industry’s investment programme for the next five years in England.

Fish Legal has asked the Office for Environmental Protection to investigate and assess whether the water companies’ final spending plans comply with the law.

The water industry regulator Ofwat published its “final determination” in December, giving the green light to £104bn of water company spending to upgrade sewage treatment infrastructure and secure long-term drinking water supplies for customers.

Ofwat invited the public to give their views on proposed water bill increases and investment to improve environmental performance for the next five years in a consultation between 11 July and 28 August 2024.

However, we say that Ofwat’s consultation was flawed.

The public had no way of seeing how the money they were to be charged was going to sort out water company damage to local rivers, from pollution to over-abstraction.

Despite being several hundred pages long, it did not contain the information that would have allowed people to make informed responses. Most of the necessary information was either out-of-date, vague or omitted entirely.

At best, the public had no chance of participating in Ofwat’s consultation in a meaningful way. At worst, they had the wool pulled over their eyes by the regulators.

We will leave it to the Office for Environmental Protection to decide whether the process and the outcome was, in fact, unlawful.