Southern Water the 'most complained about company' in new report

The Consumer Council for Water (CCW) has highlighted the findings of its annual household customer complaints report.

The report states that Southern Water was ‘the most complained about’ company.

in 2022/23 – first time CCW has been able to report on complaints ‘across all forms of contact’ – 232,817 complaints were made to water companies in England and Wales by households.

"Billing and charges (47 per cent), water services (30 per cent), and wastewater services (22 per cent) were the main causes of complaint,” a CCW spokesperson said.

"Southern Water was the most complained-about company with Thames Water the only water and sewerage company to be rated as poor for complaint levels and complaint handling.”

It was noted that Southern Water and Thames Water ‘remain the standout poor performers’ in the annual household complaint-handling report.

The companies – described as ‘poor performers failing to get to grips with high levels of customer complaints’ – provide water and wastewater services to more than 20 million people combined.

In response, Katy Taylor, chief customer officer at Southern Water, said: “We recognise that we need to do better at serving our customers and fixing their problems.

"We are investing in video diagnostics, up-skilling our customer service agents and keeping our customers regularly informed when issues take longer to fix.

"While we are seeing early signs of improvement in the quality and speed we deal with their queries, we know we still have a lot of work to do and are committed to significant improvements.”

David Bird, retail director at Thames Water, said: “Our customers expect a great service from us every time, and we’re sorry when we fail to deliver at the first opportunity.

“We’ve been working hard to turnaround our performance and have reduced our total household complaints by 28% percent compared to last year alongside a large reduction in telephone complaints.

“We’re absolutely focused on continuing to improve the quality of customers’ journeys with our business, from their first contact with us right through to the resolution of their complaints.

"We’ve completed the onshoring of our customer service call centre in Swindon so we can be closer to our customers and deliver the reliable and better-quality service they deserve. We are also investing additional resources to improve our response times to customers and to reduce the need for second stage complaints."

Mr Bird added that the company’s aim is to ‘always deliver brilliant customer service’ and ‘we’re determined to do better’.

Water minister Rebecca Pow said: “This level of complaints is yet another measure of how the water sector needs to step up and deliver for its customers. The government’s plan for water sets out how more investment, stronger regulation and tougher enforcement will transform the current system and, to ensure we see the improvements required, I will be meeting with poor performing water companies in person to scrutinise their plans.”

CCW revealed it has seen a 29 per cent rise in complaints made about water companies in the first quarter of the current year.

A spokesperson for the watchdog said: “Households served by two of England’s water and wastewater companies are being let down by a failure to understand and deal with the causes of high levels of complaints from their customers.

"The industry’s overall performance was skewed by the large number of complaints made by households to the two poorest performers. Complaints received by Southern Water were almost three times higher than the overall average for water and sewerage companies – with Thames Water’s just over one and a half times higher.”

Dr Mike Keil, CCW chief executive, said trust in the water sector has ‘never been more fragile’.

He added: “The task of rebuilding it is made all the more challenging when companies perform as poorly as Thames Water and Southern Water.”

“We’re especially concerned that these two companies have not performed well across all the main causes for people to complain and that Thames, in particular, is compounding customers’ frustrations with delays and a failure to resolve many issues first time. Customers have a right to expect better from such an essential utility provider where switching supplier is not an option.”

CCW compared the performance of water companies on the number of complaints they received per 10,000 connections, as well as assessing how well complaints had been handled.

For the first time, CCW were able to include all complaints that water companies received, ‘regardless of how they were made’.

"This provides a far more complete picture of the scale of complaints but means comparisons cannot be made with previous years,” a spokesperson said.

"Thames Water was the only water and sewerage company to be marked as poor for both the number of complaints it received and its complaint handling. It was also the worst performing company for billing disputes and the number of complaints that could not be resolved at the first time of asking.

“Southern Water was the most complained-about company with the rate of complaints per 10,000 connections almost twice as high as the next worst performer, Thames Water. It was rated worse than average for how these were handled.

“Among the smaller water only companies, South East Water scored poorly for both the number of complaints it received and how these were handled. Cambridge Water also performed poorly with the company generating three times as many complaints to CCW than the previous year.”

In April, Southern Water began its ‘turnaround plan’ to ‘deliver short, sharp improvement in our performance’ by 2025. The water company said this was supported by ‘significant new investment’ from shareholders of £1.6 billion since 2021.

One of the four key areas of the plan is creating a ‘trusted and easy customer service’.

A spokesperson added: “This is change we are absolutely committed to making and in the first quarter of the 2023-24 financial year, we have seen a significant improvement in our complaints performance as our turnaround plan begins to take effect.”

There was better news though for customers of Wessex Water, Hafren Dyfrdwy, Bristol Water and Portsmouth Water who were among the best performers.

The watchdog spokesman continued: “CCW wants to see the poor performing companies prioritising customer service through significant and sustained investment in their front-line teams.

“CCW is also continuing to call for complaint levels to play a much stronger role in determining the rewards and penalties handed to companies as part of Ofwat’s customer service incentive.”