Data sharing should be at heart of single social tariff

A water company executive has called for the design of a nationwide social tariff to incorporate data sharing on vulnerable customers.

Andy Clowes, head of customer experience and strategy at South East Water, said the proposed move towards a single social tariff would be an ideal opportunity to match up data from utilities and government.

Speaking at Utility Week’s Consumer Vulnerability & Debt Conference in Birmingham this week, Clowes said his company was trialling something similar on a local level, which could be scaled up.

Last year, South East Water began working with Maidstone Borough Council in Kent to match data and identify new customers that could be auto-enrolled onto the company’s social tariff. Clowes said the company initially had 2,000 customers enrolled on the scheme and receiving the reduced rate in that catchment area. The data match identified a further 4,000 people eligible, with more being added each month. Once enrolled the customers get a letter from South East explaining they will now pay less for their water bills.

Clowes has now called for a similar model to be adopted on a national scale.

He told the conference: “Wouldn’t life be so much easier if we could simply be told ‘here’s who is on and here’s who is off’? We could make sure everyone who is entitled to that social tariff is on it.

“We spend a lot of time, effort and energy as companies dealing with awareness, trying to get customers to sign up and to register. I really feel it’s a big opportunity for industries to grab that and make it happen.”

Asked how this would work in practice, Clowes said: “All our local councils on the current auto-enrolment datashare are technically using DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) data to help them identify customers who are eligible. That’s quite a granular approach that could be done much more simply I suspect on a national level by DWP or another government department.”

However, he added: “The challenge we would then have is it becomes intrinsically linked to benefits as a system. Given the prediction is we’re going to have lots of middle-income customers who are going to be struggling to pay, they would not necessarily be on benefits.”

The development of a single social tariff has been championed by water customer watchdog CCW, which says it would standarise support across the country. CCW cited the opportunities for datasharing in its proposed model for the scheme, set out in its affordability review last year, saying it could help to ensure the hardest to reach customers were not left out.

The partnership with Maidstone, and now other councils, is part of a series of initiatives from South East, which is also sharing data from its priority services register (PSR) with other utilities.

Clowes also explained how Kent Search & Rescue’s role has developed into a central hub for vulnerable customer data that can be accessed when supplies are interrupted, for example during extreme weather. Volunteers are able to access PSR data from various organisations securely through an app with the details then immediately deleted. They can then distribute bottled water and other emergency supplies to those on the register.

During his presentation, Clowes also talked about linking affordability to water efficiency and said the company was being increasingly active in offering water-saving devices. Last year, 104,000 of these were distributed by South East Water, whereas in the past three months alone, 160,00 have been sent out.

Collaboration to support vulnerable customers will be a key theme at Utility Week Forum, from 8-9 November in London. Find out more here.