OFWAT
“The remaining 7% was exorbitantly expensive and 93% is nearly as of water is will encourage them [the public] to use less of it or certainly use
universal as your going to get to be economic. less of it in those areas where it is most scarce.
“Companies in the eastern area, like Cambridge Water, they have I press Mason to suggest ways in which a change to the mode of
progressed quite a lot with metering already,“ he explained, “so they’ll be regulation might change to reflect and promote the changing perception of
70/80% metered by the time we get along to 2015. Folkestone Water will the value of water.
be something along the lines of 90% by 2015.” “Well it’s all this idea of trying to find the true value of water,” he
“We think that by 2015, taking England & Wales as a whole, about half of explains, “so if that means pushing greater separation between the different
households will have a meter.” parts of the value chain, it may be about encouraging greater trading
in the abstractions of water, better use of the licensing system we’ve got at
Peak and trough the moment.
I ask Mason if there is more Ofwat could do to prevent the damage done “We’ve all recognised, and people have said this to us, that setting
to the supply chain by the peak and troughs of the AMP cycles causing a price limits is a monster of its own. So if we can do something different
drop off in business at the end of a cycle. He admitted that the Early Start that is simpler, quicker, has less regulation I think everybody would be
Scheme started in AMP4 “wasn’t a great success” but believes this was happy with that.”■■■
because the companies didn’t really make the most of it.
This time Ofwat has tried a wider incentive mechanism called CIS Cap
which aimed to give an earlier picture of the capital programme that was
anticipated, letting the industry know about a year ago that the capital
programme would be just under £20B.
“We’re not sure whether that’s a success as yet because again I don’t
think companies quite grasped it early on,“ he said. “It is simply companies,
instead of just looking at the five year cycle and regulation, getting on with
their underlying business.” Mason continued, “We were trying to get
companies to own those plans and own their own businesses – not always
bouncing off the regulator.”
Similarly with skills, the regulator believes it is for companies to maintain
the workforce they need and deploy it appropriately: “Companies should be
looking to their future and how they can refresh their workforce and the
skills they have,” he decides.
Innovation
For the second year running, Ofwat is a surprising sponsor of an innovation
prize at the Water Industry Achievement Awards, jointly hosted by WWT and
WETNews. I ask Mason in which industry areas he would anticipate
innovative change most likely to occur. He said the key areas he saw were
in adoption of SUDS on a large scale, which hasn’t yet been done;
catchment management and metering. “There’s quite a lot of talk about
smart metering,” Mason said. “It seems quite expensive and companies
haven’t really set out what would be the benefits to them and to the
customers and to the environment.
“Automated meter readings you can see the benefits of that quite quickly
and I think quite a lot of the meters that go out will have that. But again I
don’t think it is the regulators necessarily can decide what’s a good
innovation and what’s a bad innovation.”
Morrison House, Primett Road, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, SG1 3EE
email: water@morrisonus.com www.morrisonus.com
“I think again this idea of trying to get the true value of water is
something which has been hidden but I think bringing out what the value
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