Breaking Waves

As the Non-Household water market now enters its 5th year of operation, there have been some recent significant changes in Panel compositions and the communication methods between wholesalers and retailers, that'll aim to see vast improvements for end consumers.

Strategic Panel and Strategic Priorities

For the first four years of the market’s infancy, the Code Panel was the senior industry group that oversaw the operation and evolution of the water retail market. It was largely transactional – dealing primarily with changes needed to the market codes. Four years in, some believed the Panel should have a more strategic role and should facilitate innovation and customer benefits which it didn’t previously. Following the approval of Change Proposal CPM039/CPW134: ‘Revisions to Panel Composition’ in July 2021, this saw the original Panel start to be wound down with the new Strategic Panel taking its place covering a transitional period from November 2021 - February 2022.

As of 1 March 2022, the Strategic Panel is the most senior industry group within MOSL, providing strategic direction and overseeing programmes of work to improve non-household customer outcomes. The prior transactional role of the panel is resolved with the creation of a new Code Change Committee, which now oversees the decision making in relation to market code changes, leaving the Strategic Panel to focus on changes for the future and betterment of the market.

The Strategic Panel is currently consulting the market on their priorities of focus, based on outcomes that Defra and Ofwat want to see;

• Value Creation
• Customer Service Excellence
• Water Efficiency is Core

This consultation is open to stakeholders to comment and the draft Strategic Panel Priority Market Outcomes document can be accessed here. Wave’s CEO, Lucy Darch, sits on the Strategic Panel as a Retailer member, so Wave is wholly supportive of this direction. We believe this is a really positive step forward for customers and they should benefit from a greater focus on customer outcomes and more strategic approach.

Bilateral Hub

A key function of the market is to deal with interactions between retailers and wholesalers, for example; if, when reading a meter, the retailer finds that the meter is broken, the retailer raises a form with the wholesaler requesting that the meter is repaired or exchanged. The wholesaler exchanges the meter and provides the retailer with the details of the new meter. Since market opening, there has been no central automated system and most interactions were by email, leading to long resolution times. Over time, some retailers and wholesalers have built their own automated processes to improve speed and efficiency, particularly where volumes are high, but there has been little consistency and no centralised reporting, and many interactions are still done by email.

A key market friction that was identified in Ofwat’s State of the Market report in August 2020 was “cumbersome and inefficient wholesaler - retailer interactions”, increasing trading parties’ costs and greatly impacting the speed and quality of service for many customers.

September 2021 saw the launch of the Bilateral Hub, a central hub system for wholesalers and retailers to manage two-way transactions. The first process that was implemented was the verification of meters (C1) or other supply arrangements, which is the most common process in the market - equating to more than 17,000 transactions in 2020/21. This is where meter details or the supply arrangements including meters need to be verified, e.g. to check which meter is registered to which premises.

Further process forms were added on 31 May including:

• meter repair/replace (B5),
• customer complaints (F5),
• customer enquiries (F4),
• and trade effluent enquiries (G1)

More phases will be released until November 2022, when the programme is due to end. Any remaining processes, which will be used relatively infrequently, will be delivered after this point as 'business as usual'. Wave believes that this is a really positive step forward for customers who should benefit from improved services through better management of these transactions.

Jen Armes, a Public Sector Account Manager at Wave, recently flew out to Lasi, Romania for five days volunteering with an animal charity called Underdog International.

Underdog International do fantastic work around the world rescuing dogs and cats and connecting dogs with children. This work aims to build love and compassion for animals in children at a young age so they can lead change in their own countries in the future.

A large part of their work happens in Romania, a country with a sad history for animal welfare, but where there is a growing group of dedicated people who go to an amazing effort to change things and save as many animals as they can. They do this by providing medical care, fostering and adoption.

When war was declared in neighbouring Ukraine this year, thousands of refugees started crossing the border and lots of them had their pets with them.

Showing human kindness

A small team led by vet, Emma Stratulat, knew they had a role to play. They set out on a mission and Jen was happy to be able to play a small part and volunteer to assist Emma for a few days.

Emma’s objective was clear, she didn’t want any refugees to have to abandon their pet in Romania. Knowing only too well the conditions in public shelters and street conditions for dogs and cats, she was determined to keep every animal with its family by providing food, pet passports, vaccinations, medical care, appropriate travel crates and above all else compassion for both the animals and humans.

The work Jen did was varied and included unloading supplies, cleaning, feeding animals and showing them some human kindness. She delivered supplies to refugee centres, listening to the stories of people who needed to tell them and assisted Emma on her visits to the public shelters – she even rescued a three-month-old puppy from the side of a road.

An overwhelming but rewarding experience

When asked about her time in Romania, Jen said, “it was one of the best experiences of my life to assist Emma in her work and with English as the common language I was quickly immersed into the real-life situations of some of the people I met. I’ll never forget Emma telling a teenage girl in a refugee centre that absolutely she could keep her cat, and everything would be done so that it could travel with her to her aunt’s house in Holland. She just broke down. A child who should be in school and doing normal things, who was sleeping in a converted office building on camp beds with her family was told she didn’t have to lose one more thing she loved. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so humbled.”

Despite some of the work being quite overwhelming for Jen, there were some truly rewarding experiences. On day four of her trip, a group of Swiss volunteers collected the dogs that were moving to families and foster carers in Switzerland and France. The Underdog team of volunteers returned to the public shelter and collected five dogs, one of these was a male German Shepherd-type (none of the dogs have names or exact breeds) who had been in the public shelter for seven years.

Jen added, “He was clearly a staff favourite as many came out to pet him and wave him off. Lots of them cried, which is not so much attachment to the dogs as they see too many, but I think it’s the little bit of hope that some can be saved by the right families.”

“I’m really thankful to Wave for granting me time away from my role for this volunteering work. We’ve just been given a day’s paid leave as part of our Wave benefits, and I was the first person in the business to use that.”

Support Underdog International

If you’d like to know more about how you can support Underdog International, please visit their website.

Wave is committed to building on our expertise in the Public Sector and we’re proud of the progress we made throughout 2021/22. As well as recently being awarded a place on LASER’s latest Framework, we were also awarded:

• Two national direct award frameworks with North East Procurement Organisation (NEPO) and a collaborative framework developed by YPO, ESPO, TEC and West Mercia Energy.
• One regional framework from Manchester City Council which benefits organisations in the north west.
• Two DPS agreements with Inspired Energy and Inenco Group Ltd.
• Retention of our place on the Crown Commercial Services (CCS) Water, Wastewater and Ancillary Services Framework.

The benefits of a quality led framework

We’re pleased to see more routes to market available for Public Sector customers, that not only provide innovation opportunities but also provide choice. By joining a quality-led Framework, you can benefit from a compliant route to market, high-quality customer service, competitive pricing, access to water efficiency measures and social and environmental value, all of which helps to support your organisation’s own objectives and priorities.

A retailer with a social and sustainability promise

We’ve made firm commitments to water and carbon reduction targets and pledged green initiatives to benefit customers and communities and deliver social value. Within our 2021 submissions, our social value offering was highly commended and our commitments to environmental improvements were also recognised when we were named as Water Retailer of the Year at the Water Industry Awards 2021.

If you’re not yet in a contract and want to learn more around all compliant Public Sector routes to market, please contact us.

Michael Carey

Public Sector Business Development Manager

M: 0739 456 3017

E: [email protected]

10% off Automatic Meter Readers (AMRs)

To support our customers with their water saving goals we also offered 10% off Automatic Meter Readers, but we’re a strong believer that water saving shouldn’t only last a week. That's why we’ve extended this discount until 30 June 2022. You can find out more and get a quote by visiting our Water Saving Week page.

The RainDrop Challenge

Did you know, the single biggest user of water in a UK household is the shower? It accounts for approximately 25% of the water used in the home, so throughout the week, we challenged our people to measure the flow rate of their shower using a flow bag.

A flow bag determines the amount of water a shower head uses in litres per minute and lets you know how much you could save by swapping to an eco shower head.

We’ve plenty of these to go around, so if you’d like some of our free flow bags to share across your organisation, please get in touch and let us know if you’d like 25, 50, 100 or more. There’s a short video by our partner, SaveMoneyCutCarbon on how to use the flow bag - we'd love to know your results. 

Rounding up the week

We finished the week with a fantastic talk from Andrew Tucker, Water Demand Reduction Manager at Thames Water. He gave a thought-provoking presentation to our people where he discussed the changing landscape of water in the natural environment and what it means for us as individuals.

A successful campaign

Throughout the week we managed to achieve some great results:

• Our messages reached over 4,300 people through our social media posts
• Over 500 people watched our video highlighting the need to save water
• 50% of our people that took part in the RainDrop Challenge already had an eco-friendly shower head and out of those who didn't, 32% have pledged to change their shower head to save water
• The overall Water Saving Week campaign reached 3.6 million people, generating 8 million impressions