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Members’ group Fair Water Connections (FWC) has urged water firms to overhaul how they measure standards for developer services to reflect what is important to self-lay organisations (SLOs) and the developers they seek to supply.
At the start of 2015 water companies introduced voluntary standards covering their developer services activities and, after nine months of reporting, water companies have said their headline performance compliance is now at 96 per cent.
However, FWC claimed there is disconnect between the experience of its members and what is being reported by Water UK on behalf of water firms.
FWC managing coordinator Martyn Speight claimed the companies’ headline improvement comes from improving the performance of high volume, largely administrative tasks whilst paying less attention to delivery on larger, more complex sites.
“We think it is now time for companies to refocus the way they use their developer services measures so as to raise delivery standards for those providing water supplies on larger sites,” he said. “So we are calling for companies, in their reporting, to weight main-laying work and give it greater prominence over administrative tasks and routine service-laying work.”
A spokesman for Water UK said: “We are still at an early stage of this work and we recognise we have more to do. We have been discussing with Ofwat and other stakeholders about what measures might be appropriate. This includes working on broader customer services satisfaction measures.
“The report highlights the issue of weighting, which is very complex. However, we are determined to tackle this and other issues in order to drive service delivery improvements.”
FWC also said it believed successful achievement of a measure should only be gained when all required elements are demonstrably delivered.
Speight said: “Particularly at the quotation stage, FWC members do not receive all the information they require. This causes them delays and disadvantages them in fairly competing against water company provision.”
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