Thames Water and Southern Water named as the ‘standout poor performers’ as number of complaints sky-rocket

Two UK water companies have been found to be “stand out poor performers” that are “letting down” more than 20 million people.

The Consumer Council for Water (CCW) said Thames Water and Southern Water both failed “to understand and deal with the causes of high levels of complaints from their customers”.

CCW said the industry’s overall performance was skewed by the number of complaints made by households to Thames Water and Southern Water.

Thames Water was the worst performing company for billing disputes and the number of complaints that could not be resolved at the first time of asking.

It was the only water and sewerage company to be marked as poor for both the number of complaints it received and its complaint handling.

The number of complaints received by Southern Water was almost three times higher than the overall average for water and sewerage companies. Thames Water’s were just over one-and-a-half times higher.

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

CCW said it had seen a 29% rise in complaints brought to it after water firms had been unable to resolve them during the first quarter of 2023/24 compared with the previous quarter.

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 generated three times as many complaints to CCW than last year.

Among the best performers were Wessex Water, Hafren Dyfrdwy, Bristol Water and Portsmouth Water.

Overall, households made 232,817 complaints to water companies in England and Wales during 2022/23, with problems relating to billing and charges accounting for almost half of them.

Issues with water services made up 30% of complaints, with these rising significantly during the summer drought last year when six suppliers introduced hosepipe restrictions.

CCW chief executive Dr Mike Keil said “trust in the water sector” has “never been more fragile” and “rebuilding” trust is being made “more challenging when companies perform as poorly as Thames Water and Southern Water.“

He added: “Customers have a right to expect better from such an essential utility provider where switching supplier is not an option.”

Thames Water has been under fire in recent weeks after a campaigner shared a video of the true state of its treated sewage water, which the water company’s CEO Cathryn Ross said she would happily “take a dip” in.

Ashley Smith, from the campaign group Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, told NationalWorld he saw “brown bacterial floc” in the water as well as the “occasional sanitary product and condom”.

Southern Water customers have also been angered over the past weeks as homes in East Sussex were left without water for around 10 days due to an “unknown leak”.

Thames Water retail director David Bird said the staff have been “working hard to turn around our performance and have reduced our total household complaints by 28% compared to last year alongside a large reduction in telephone complaints.”

He added: “We are also investing additional resources to improve our response times to customers and to reduce the need for second-stage complaints.”

Chief customer officer at Southern Water, Katy Taylor, said the water company “recognises” it “needs to do better at serving our customers and fixing their problems.”

She added: “We are investing in video diagnostics, upskilling 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.”

A Water UK spokeswoman said: “Companies worked hard last year to support customers and maintain infrastructure through an unprecedented drought and record-breaking temperatures, and it is good to see that complaints to the ombudsman remained stable.

“Complaints about bills are increasingly being resolved by companies themselves, with an 8% reduction in these types of complaints being escalated to CCW. However, we appreciate that many customers remain concerned about their bills, which is why we have announced plans to more than double the number of households eligible to receive support, rising to 3.2 million households.”