Complaint reporting guidance for household customers

We uses data on complaints as an indicator to identify areas of good and poor performance and to press water companies to put right instances of poor service. We ask companies to report summary complaint information on a quarterly basis.

The information is used as a reputational incentive in our annual Household Complaints Report and will be used as a financial incentive alongside Ofwat’s Customer measure of experience (C-MeX). We work with companies on an ongoing basis to share information that can help improve performance.

This guidance is designed to help water companies in England and Wales categorise and report complaints in a consistent way to ensure that complaint reporting provides an accurate reflection of the service they are delivering to customers.

It’s not intended that this guidance instructs companies on how they should deal with complaints; this is down to the companies’ own processes and procedures. However, we expect companies to consider this guidance when implementing any new processes or initiatives to ensure any changes do not conflict with the guidance