Water companies urge Ofwat to maintain self-assurance programme

Water companies have urged Ofwat to maintain the self-assurance programme being used to monitor the sector’s readiness for retail competition following the appointment of a new director for market opening.

Adam Cooper was named in March by the regulator as the new person overseeing the market opening programme and South West Water and Yorkshire Water have urged him to stick with the current self-assurance approach as the sector prepares for the market opening in April 2017.

This comes as Cooper as began listening to the industry on how best to proceed with market opening and how to monitor the sector’s progress. At the same time, some parts of the sector are calling for a “more intrusive” role for Ofwat.

Yorkshire Water head of business retail Nick Topham told Utility Week Ofwat’s outcome based regulation “is correct and the logical way forward” to reassure stakeholders the sector will be ready by the go-live date because it will allow the companies to tackle issues and problems that occur which may not have been addressed by an “invasive form of regulatory control”.

He added that having a step-by-step assurance process where the companies have to achieve certain targets and timeframes ahead of market opening would be “immature” regulation.

Topham said: “Everyone wants this market to work, everyone has signed up to it, so [Ofwat should] let us get on with it.”

South West Water regulatory director Iain Vosper agreed and said he is “supportive” of the current assurance programme and that there is no need for additional involvement from Ofwat despite calls from within the sector for a greater regulatory involvement.

CGI water sector head of practice Graham Hainsworth also told Utility Week the sector should have a standardised test solution to allow them to check their systems independently from Ofwat.

“The end result would be more confidence that progress is being made – or effective assurance in other words,” he said.