Household complaints to water companies in England and Wales 2018-19

Our latest report on household complaints to water companies in England and Wales, compares company performance based on ‘unwanted contacts’ where customers have had to call their supplier to resolve a problem, and/or written complaints against the previous year’s numbers and per 10,000 connected households.

Key findings include:

• 2.8% reduction in unwanted contacts in 2018/19, down to 2,073,337
• 1.1% reduction in unwanted contacts since 2015/16
• 7.7% increase in written complaints on the previous year
• 28.1% increase in water service complaints
• Four water companies challenged to improve their poor performance – Thames, Hafren, Northumbrian and Essex and Suffolk
• 60% increase in customers having to write to their company more than once to resolve their complaint
• Only two of the five main categories of written complaints decreased

Tony Smith, CEO, Consumer Council for Water

Tony Smith, Chief Executive says:

Far too many customers are having to waste their time and suffer the frustration of disputing unclear or inaccurate bills.
 In the autumn we’ll be bringing the whole industry together to try and improve the standards of billing, as well as demanding a significant fall in the complaints made to the four poor performers named in our report.