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Water2Business has been ranked as the top-performing retailer with more than 5,000 connection points for 2020/21 closely followed by Business Stream and Everflow.
Although market performance charges were suspended by Ofwat in March 2020 to relieve pressure on trading parties, MOSL continued to track the performance of both retailers and wholesalers for market performance standards (MPS), which are associated to service levels.
For wholesalers it also measured the operational performance standards (OPS), which involve the provision of wholesale services to retailers.
Yorkshire, South West and Anglian were the top three performing water and sewerage companies on MPS, while Portsmouth, Bristol and South East ranked highest of water-only wholesalers.
For water only wholesalers:
The market operator saw that market performance continued to rise over the past year in “a steadily improving trend”, however fewer MPS and OPS tasks were carried out. The report showed reduced MPS activity in each of the national lockdowns, which increased as Covid-19 restrictions were eased. It said OPS activities also reduced and took longer to return to pre-lockdown levels.
MOSL said performance was impacted by Covid-19 because some business premises were forced to close or operate with restrictions in place that meant in some cases the levels of meter readings completed more than halved year-on-year.
The number of internal long unread meters doubled in the past year due to readers finding it particularly difficult to access meters during lockdowns – MOSL noted that internal meters were especially hard to reach.
Compared with 2019/20 annual non-household consumption reduced by 23 per cent last year. The report showed monthly consumption levels dropped significantly as the first national lockdown was announced, then rose immediately after the lifting of restrictions, before dropping again when further lockdowns were imposed.
Likewise, the report showed switching activity slumped during each of the lockdowns to its lowest point in April 2020.
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