Business water retailer rankings revealed

Yorkshire Water retained its top ranking, both as a wholesaler and retailer, in MOSL’s latest league table of non-domestic water company performance.

The market operator’s second ranking showed “significant improvement” in Market Performance Standards (MPS) across both retailers and wholesalers between April and October this year. However, it said there was still need for companies at the bottom of the rankings to drive improvement.

Yorkshire Water Business Services, the management of which was taken on by Business Stream last month, improved its MPS score from 91.1 per cent in the last financial year to 92.7 per cent in the most recent half. Elsewhere in the large retailer table Affinity for Business was ranked second and Water 2 Business third – reversing their positions for 2018/19. SES Business Water was the most improved, moving from 11^th place to fifth. Wave fell from seventh place to tenth while Castle Water dropped one ranking to 11^th and bottom place.

The smaller retailer table (fewer than 5,000 Supply Point Identification Numbers) was led by Welsh Water, with Regent Water bottom.

When it comes to the water and sewage companies (WaSC), Yorkshire was again top, followed by Wessex and Anglian, with Thames last. Bristol topped the water only company (WoC) list with South East worst rated.

In terms of Operational Performance Standards (OPS), Anglian was the top WaSC and Thames the worst, while Bristol and South East replicated their positions for WoCs.

The tables were first published in May as part of MOSL’s Annual Market Performance Report. The market operator said that since that point, it had seen significant work go into cleansing data, improving business processes and investing in better ways of working. It stressed that much of this work had involved close joint working between retail and wholesale parties.

Steve Arthur, MOSL’s market performance director, said: “These measures are an important tool in ensuring trading parties are held accountable for their performance.  We strongly encourage retailers and wholesalers to retain a sense of urgency in delivering improved outcomes for business customers and promote collaborative programmes of work between parties to ensure the water retail market delivers on the expectations set out when the market first opened almost three years ago.

“This year we also saw the introduction of charges for OPS and we will be initiating the first batch of rectification plans against OPS in early November. We would expect companies who become subject to these plans, to show the same upward trend in performance as we have seen where plans have been triggered against other standards in the framework.”