Draft Strategy and Forward Work Programme 2025-26

To meet our overall strategic objectives, CCW’s Forward Work Programme contains the deliverables we will focus on achieving in 2025-26. These are over and above our business-as-usual activities – dealing with complaints, challenging companies, generating insights and communicating with customers.

CCW’s day-to-day work helping customers resolve disputes and save money is regularly measured and scrutinised by our Board.

CCW’s customer targets for 2025-26:

• All complaints to CCW will be acknowledged and allocated for review to a case advisor within two working days.
• 80% of cases will be resolved by 20 working days.
• 95% of cases will be resolved at 40 working days.

To help increase trust in the water sector, in 2025-26 CCW will:

• Prepare for and respond to any CMA appeals following Ofwat’s December 2024 Final Determinations
• Contribute to the joint Defra/Welsh government’s Water Commission
• Set up and run customer panels for each of the water companies in England and Wales to hold water company executives to account
• Build on lessons learned from the 2024 price review to influence the 2029 price review
• Carry out at least 5 incident assessments with water companies
• Carry out at least 5 debt assessments with water companies
• Establish CCW’s Customer Relations department as a Centre of Excellence:
• Carry out at least 8 complaint assessments with household water companies and at least 2 with retailers
• Work with all parties to create a mediation and adjudication scheme for business customers
• Carry out at least one formal investigation – either into services for households or business customers – as per CCW’s powers in the Water Industry Act 1991
• Publish a follow-up report on whether low water-use businesses (using up to 0.5Ml/yr) should be in the water retail market in England
• Publish a 2-years-on progress report of CCW’s Five Year Review recommendations

In our commitment to fair and affordable bills, CCW will:

• Continue to campaign for a single social tariff
• Develop a new water poverty model to accurately measure water poverty across all water companies in England and Wales, and use that model to hold water companies to account on their pledge to end water poverty by 2030
• Facilitate the delivery of the WaterSure recommendations
• Evaluate the implementation of vulnerability strategies, including vulnerable customers’ experience of water companies’ priority services registers
• Raise public awareness of affordability support – as measured by CCW’s Water Matters research. All companies should aim to achieve at least 53% by summer 2026. Any companies who achieve this score or higher by summer 2025 should aim to improve their summer 2025 score by 3% as a minimum.

To play our part in ensuring resilient water services for customers, CCW will:

• Ensure the design and communication of Defra’s new water efficiency label works for customers and provide evidence of public awareness of it
• On smart meters, ensure water companies provide the necessary information so households and businesses can save water and money, and make sure the customer journey meets their expectations
• Revisit our End Sewer Flooding Misery campaign and work with companies to help them adopt best practice, particularly for vulnerable customers

What we cost

CCW’s costs for 2025-26 will be at least 29.3p per bill payer. Further increases may be confirmed before April 1st 2025 to enable CCW to take on additional responsibilities.