Environmental secretary Thérèse Coffey has described Ofwat’s poor performance report as “extremely disappointing.”
The report revealed that water companies will need to return £114 million to customers for their underperformance.
Ofwat categorised companies’ performance as ‘leading’ ‘average’ or ‘lagging’, against a set of common metrics, including pollution incidents, customer service and leakage.
For 2022-23, no company has been ranked in the ‘leading’ category.
Ofwat marked 10 companies as “average” while seven are “lagging” – Anglian Water, Dŵr Cymru, Southern Water, Thames Water, Yorkshire Water, Bristol Water and South East Water.
The news follows a series of fines faced by Thames Wessex and Southern Water over illegal sewage spills.
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Coffrey stressed that she has been “clear if these companies do not make improvements across a range of different measures,” the government and regulators “will not hesitate” to use powers to enforce it.
“The Government’s Plan for Water sets out how more investment, stronger regulation and tougher enforcement will transform the current system,” she added.
“We are pushing water companies to go further and have changed the rules on bonuses and dividends to ensure billpayers do not reward pollution – or pay for what should already have been delivered,” Coffrey continued.
Earlier this year, the chief executives of Yorkshire Water and Thames Water and owner of South West Water gave up bonuses over public anger over sewage dumping in rivers.
“We are clear water companies must not profit from environmental damage and we have given Ofwat increased powers under the Environment Act 2021 to hold them account for poor performance,” Coffrey said.
