Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 2ND - 8TH FEBRUARY 2018 | 5 £2.5m BEIS proposes making up to £2.5 million a year available to communities prepared to host a nuclear waste disposal site. £500m The High Court has rejected a request by a group of peaking plant developers for an injunction to suspend Ofgem's plans to alter triad avoidance payments. Ofgem said a delay would have cost consumers £500 million. See story, p6 WATER Thames Water uses detectives to clamp down on water theft Thames Water has deployed a team of investigators led by a former detective to track down thieves stealing water from its pipe network. Having started out as one per- son, the team has been expanded to eight following a "dramatic crime spike" over the past six years. The investigators patrol London and the Thames Valley to find and, if necessary, prosecute people after unauthorised connections "sky-rocketed" from 33 in 2011 to 734 in 2017. Thames Water described its action to address the problem as an important step because any "unaccounted for water is classed as leakage in end-of-year perfor- mance tables". In June last year, Thames Water was fined £8.55 million by Ofwat after the regulator described the water company's underperformance on leakage as "unacceptable". When the firm published its half-year results in November 2017 it admitted it "let down" customers on its leak- age but says now that it is on a "trajectory of recovery". "Nine months on and we are yet to see any significant progress in the number of businesses switching water supplier" Brendan Flattery, chief executive of Utilitywise, on slow progress in the competitive water market. South West Water has commissioned a £5 million wastewater treatment plant in Fluxton, East Devon, next to the site of its old Ottery St Mary works. The old Ottery site will remain operational but will be used only for flow control and storm storage. The project took three years to devise and develop and was delivered by South West Water's H5O delivery alliance in partnership with the company's wastewater team. There was a sharp rise in the number of complaints from businesses to the Consumer Council for Water at the end of last year – up from 174 in 2016 to 815 in the same period in 2017 – its first annual market report has revealed. The independent body said it would work on improving performance with the small number of retailers ''responsible for a disproportionate share of the increase in complaints'' since the non-household market opened last April. COMPLAINTS TO CCWATER SOAR 2016 0 95 5 22 15 31 6 174 2016 73 2016 2017 43 527 14 43 16 156 16 Retail Billing & Metering Water Sewerage Administration Other competition charges Complaints Enquiries Who were the complaints about? www.ccwater.org.uk @WaterWatchdog Third quarter contact from business customers 1 October to 31 December 2017 What business customers complained about 875 2017 259 2017

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