Our response to the Department of Business and Trade consultation on redress, appeals and enforcement
CCW welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Department for Business and Trade’s (DBT) consultation on Swifter and Simpler Competition Redress, Regulatory Appeals and Competition Enforcement.
CCW’s response to proposals to streamline competition law redress and enforcement processes, alongside reforms to the regulatory appeals regime. The proposals would focus appeals on specific issues or regulatory errors and introduce a new right for consumer bodies to bring appeals.
Executive summary
The purpose of these reforms should be to build better functioning regulated and competitive sectors for customers, not simply a better process for investors or regulated companies. Investor confidence matters, but government should give equal weight to consumer confidence, fairness, accountability and the quality of sector outcomes. In water, where consumer trust is at an all-time low, the test should be whether reform helps decisions to be reached more quickly and robustly while improving outcomes and confidence for both household and non-household water customers.
For Chapters 1 and 3
CCW supports the objectives of swifter redress and more efficient Competition Act enforcement. These proposals are not sector-specific, so the same core consumer tests should apply in water as elsewhere:
- Customers harmed by anti-competitive conduct should obtain effective redress quickly
- Procedural streamlining should not weaken fairness, transparency or deterrence
- DBT should clearly set out how the reforms will work with the governance of England’s non-household water retail market, the only part of the water sector in England where most business customers have competitive choice of retailer
For Chapter 2
CCW supports moving from the current broad water redetermination model towards a more focused appeal that corrects material regulatory errors. Our preferred alternative for DBT to test is retaining appeals with the CMA but replacing full redetermination with a narrower statutory appeal focused on specified material errors. DBT should compare that focused CMA model directly with transfer to the Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) before deciding where water appeals should sit.
CCW cannot support committing water appeals to the CAT unless government demonstrates that the CAT would have the water sector expertise, economic capability, capacity and resources needed, and that transfer would produce better consumer outcomes than this focused CMA alternative, including on expertise, capacity, cost, accessibility and speed.
CCW would also like DBT to take this opportunity to grant CCW the right to appeal, when it is in the consumer interest. Existing water code appeal rights are currently limited to materially affected water supply licensees, sewerage licensees and undertakers, so CCW cannot itself bring such an appeal.
Taking action to increase consumer representation in the water sector would correct the present asymmetry in appeal rights. CCW, as the statutory consumer body for the water industry, should have an express and practicable right to seek permission to appeal material errors in both (a) regulatory price review decisions and (b) in appealable Ofwat decisions on the Wholesale Retail Code and Market Arrangements Code, where those errors risk significant consumer detriment. This would strengthen consumer accountability at a time of all-time low trust and ensure that material errors affecting customers can be challenged directly, rather than relying on a company to bring an appeal.
There is also no parity across regulated sectors. Citizens Advice, as the statutory consumer advocate for energy, is a body that can itself appeal relevant energy regulatory decisions to the CMA*. DBT should use these reforms to examine and correct that inconsistency by giving CCW an equivalent, workable consumer appeal right in water, supported by appropriate permission and cost protections.
*The CMA confirmed this expressly in its April 2026 decision granting Citizens Advice permission to intervene in the RIIO-3 energy licence modification appeals (CMA, Decision on permission to intervene, 28 April 2026, paragraph 9).
Summary of CCW’s key asks and recommendations
- DBT should publish a direct, evidence-based comparison of a focused and targeted CMA appeal with the proposed CAT model before deciding where water appeals should sit, including expertise, capacity, end-to-end timing, costs, accessibility and consumer outcomes.
- Water appeals should move away from full redetermination and focus on specified material regulatory errors, but the appeals body responsible should follow the evidence rather than be predetermined.
- CCW should have an express and practicable right to seek permission to appeal material errors in Ofwat price review decisions and otherwise appealable Wholesale Retail Code and Market Arrangements Code decisions where significant consumer detriment may result, improving accountability and parity with the energy sector.
- Any CCW appeal or intervention right should be supported by proportionate permission requirements, early and predictable asymmetric cost protection, workable access to information and proportionate procedural requirements so that the right is usable in practice.
- If appeals transfer to the CAT, government should ensure access to sufficient water sector, regulatory, economic and finance expertise, and CAT Rules should support timely, proportionate resolution rather than unnecessary adversarial process.
- Remittal should be subject to clear directions and deadlines, with Ofwat required to explain publicly how the revised decision affects customer bills, affordability, service, investment, environmental outcomes and resilience.
- For Chapters 1 and 3, DBT should ensure that faster redress and Competition Act enforcement work coherently with the governance of the non-household water retail market and deliver quicker, accessible redress without weakening fairness, transparency or deterrence.
Responses to chapter 1 questions
We focus below on the key issues raised by the proposed reforms from a consumer perspective, rather than responding to each of the detailed consultation questions, in line with CCW’s role as a consumer body.
CCW supports the overall objective of making competition redress swifter, simpler and more effective. The customer test is whether more people and organisations harmed by anti-competitive behaviour receive fair compensation more quickly, automatically where possible, and with less complexity and cost.
Greater use of alternative dispute resolution and effective CMA redress powers can support that objective. Separately, for the regulatory appeal reforms in Chapter 2, CCW is explicitly asking DBT to test a focused and targeted CMA appeal as an alternative to transferring appeals to the CAT, rather than treating CAT transfer as the only route to a narrower appeal.
While these proposals are not water-sector specific, their practical application in England’s non-household water retail market needs to be clear. This is the only part of the water sector in England where most business customers have competitive choice of retailer. The reforms should provide effective co-ordination between the CMA, Ofwat, MOSL and the CAT.
This request sits alongside our wider asks that redress is accessible, timely, proportionate and maximises the amount returned to affected customers. We would ask that DBT engage further with CCW, Ofwat, MOSL and other non-household market stakeholders before finalising the reforms.
For customers, the important outcome is that compensation is provided quickly, automatically wherever possible and through a process that is straightforward to understand and access. Redress schemes should minimise the burden on customers to demonstrate eligibility where the company or regulator already holds sufficient information to identify those affected.
This could be particularly beneficial in markets such as the non-household water retail market, where an infringement could potentially affect significant numbers of business customers and where individually pursuing relatively small losses may not be proportionate.
Responses to chapter 2 questions
Overall view
CCW supports the objective of making regulatory appeals quicker, simpler and more proportionate, and supports narrowing water appeals so that they focus on material error rather than, for example, reopening an entire price review. This matters to customers because the appeals framework affects the prices they pay, the services they receive and their protections, while ensuring regulatory decisions are subject to effective independent scrutiny. Customers also end up paying at least some of the costs of the process, so greater efficiency should lead to greater value.
Price controls are, however, unusually complex and consequential. They combine regulatory economics, finance, investment, service, environmental obligations and customer affordability, so they warrant careful treatment rather than automatic transfer into a generic appeals model.
CCW has not seen evidence that the CAT would currently have the necessary depth of water sector expertise and capacity, nor evidence of a clear process for transferring or recreating relevant CMA expertise. Without this, we are concerned that determinations may not be sufficiently robust or informed by the interaction between regulatory finance, cost assessment, asset health, deliverability, performance commitments, environmental duties, resilience and customer bill impacts.
Technical expertise is therefore essential. Any appeals body must be able to interrogate complex economic evidence and regulatory judgement and should use an inquisitorial approach where appropriate. A more court-like adversarial model risks increasing legal costs and focusing too narrowly on legal argument.
To provide assurance of the robustness of the process, DBT should undertake and publish a direct comparison of the proposed CAT model with a focused and targeted CMA appeal using the same narrower material error standard of review. No decision to transfer water appeals should be taken until DBT has demonstrated, with evidence, which model is more likely to deliver timely, robust and accessible appeals and better consumer outcomes.
CCW should have an express right to seek permission to appeal material errors in (a) water price review decisions and (b) appealable Ofwat decisions on the Wholesale Retail Code and Market Arrangements Code where significant consumer detriment may result. The 2017 water code appeal regime currently provides CMA appeal rights to materially affected licensees and undertakers, but not CCW.
Any transfer to the CAT must preserve these sector-specific routes and CCW would like DBT to take the opportunity to expand the right to appeal to the statutory consumer body for water. This would help address the current asymmetry in appeal rights, strengthen consumer trust and accountability and support a fairer, better functioning water sector in which consumers have a stronger voice in challenging decisions that affect them.
Any reform must preserve existing sector-specific appeal routes and should give CCW an express, practicable right to seek permission to appeal where a material regulatory error risks significant consumer detriment. This is a key ask. It would address:
- The current imbalance in which regulated companies can challenge decisions affecting their interests but customers – who fund all water company activity – cannot challenge (via the statutory consumer body) a material error.
- Improve parity with energy, where Citizens Advice can itself appeal relevant regulatory decisions.
- Strengthen accountability and consumer confidence at a time when trust in the water sector is at an all-time low.
The right should cover both price review decisions and otherwise appealable decisions on the Wholesale Retail Code and Market Arrangements Code. It must be accompanied by proportionate permission, cost and participation safeguards so that the right is usable in practice.
DBT, working with Defra, will need to demonstrate whether primary and/or secondary legislation must be amended to preserve existing water appeal routes, transfer any routes to the CAT if that is the chosen model, and create an express CCW right of appeal without gaps or uncertainty during transition.
Specific answers to consultation questions
Not without further evidence and safeguards to ensure the reforms improve outcomes for consumers.
A single specialist tribunal such as the CAT could improve consistency across regulated sectors. The CAT already hears competition and economic-regulatory cases involving a range of sector regulators. However, a water price control appeal requires scrutiny of regulatory finance, cost assessments, asset health, deliverability, environmental obligations, performance incentives and customer bill impacts. The CAT’s current functions include water sector competition decisions, but they do not demonstrate routine experience of reviewing a complete water price control.
A tribunal-led process is also likely to be more formal and adversarial, with greater reliance on pleadings, specialist legal argument, procedural hearings and potentially cross-examination. Those features may help discipline an appeal, but they can also increase the legal, economic and staff resources needed to participate effectively.
This matters particularly for consumer bodies: CCW has materially fewer legal and economic resources than regulated companies, so a process that requires extensive specialist representation or expert evidence could make intervention or appeal disproportionately costly and could turn a formal right to participate into one that is difficult to exercise in practice.
In this context, CCW recommends that DBT also assesses a focused appeal retained within the CMA. The CMA has direct experience from PR19 and PR24. A more targeted statutory appeal process can be focussed on material errors, legal process failings and/or failure of regulatory duties, without having to undertake a full price control redetermination. CCW would support CAT transfer only if the government demonstrates that it offers a clear consumer benefit over the alternative of a focussed CMA approach.
Yes. The Rules should include an early permission stage; identification of grounds of appeal; evidence requirements; powers to strike out abusive, repetitive or unarguable grounds; and publish indicative timetables.
The Rules should also encourage constructive resolution of issues before a full hearing. Without compromising judicial independence, the CAT/CMA should be able to identify matters suitable for clarification or regulatory reconsideration. The process should not default to full adversarial litigation where an alternative course could resolve the error more quickly and at lower cost. For consumers, the outcome should be earlier certainty, less appeal cost ultimately falling on customers, and faster correction of errors affecting bills, affordability, service, investment, environmental performance or resilience.
Yes. Appeals should correct a material error of fact, law or failure of regulatory duties. The appellant should identify the alleged error, show why it is material and explain the causal link to the decision and related consumer outcome.
A narrower error-based standard of review is an argument in favour of the CAT model, because it is designed to review specified errors rather than undertake a fresh redetermination. However, water price control decisions inevitably involve regulatory and economic judgement. The appeal framework should therefore distinguish between a material error and a legitimate difference of judgement. Where the regulator has considered the relevant evidence, applied the law and its duties correctly, explained its reasoning and reached an outcome within a reasonable range, the appeal body should not substitute its own preferred judgement simply because it might have struck the balance differently.
An error should be material only where there is a realistic possibility that correcting it
would make a significant difference to the determination or to customer bills, affordability, service, investment, environmental performance or resilience. The legislation should clarify how cumulative errors are treated, because individually modest errors may together cause substantial consumer detriment.
Yes. The notice should identify the precise decision, alleged error, evidence relied on, materiality, remedy sought, market effect and consumer or public interest effects. This would help deter vexatious or tactical challenges.
Only in limited circumstances. New evidence should be admitted only if it could not reasonably have been supplied earlier, responds to an unforeseen issue arising from the final determination in the case of price review decisions, or is necessary to avoid a clearly unjust outcome. The CAT/CMA should consider whether admitting it would unfairly disadvantage other parties or compensate for poor participation in the price review.
Yes, where necessary and proportionate. Cross-examination should be exceptional and confined to material disputed evidence that cannot be tested adequately in writing. The CAT should control its scope and duration to avoid unnecessary cost and adversarial escalation.
Yes, but with binding directions and deadlines. Remittal better preserves Ofwat’s role and accountability than allowing the CAT routinely to substitute its own price control, in the case of price review decision. It also reinforces the distinction between error correction and a second price review. That can benefit consumers by keeping responsibility for the integrated settlement with the expert regulator.
The CAT should identify the error clearly, give binding directions sufficient to secure its correction and set a short deadline. Ofwat should explain publicly how its revised decision complies with the ruling and what it means for bills and other consumer outcomes.
The CAT should retain a limited reserve power to impose or specify a remedy where Ofwat fails to comply within the deadline. That safeguard should be used exceptionally.
Yes, particularly for statutory consumer bodies such as CCW. The main barriers are legal and economic costs, adverse cost exposure, information asymmetry, specialist staff requirements and the risk that litigation displaces CCW’s wider work. A more court-like process may heighten these barriers because formal pleadings, procedural hearings, disclosure, expert evidence and cross-examination can require sustained specialist legal and economic support. Companies are generally better placed to absorb those demands, while for a statutory consumer body the same requirements can consume a significant share of limited resources and make participation less feasible even where the potential consumer detriment is substantial.
A permission threshold is necessary to filter out weak cases, but statutory consumer bodies should not have to conduct and fund the equivalent of a full case simply to secure permission or cost protection. Permission should be based on a properly evidenced arguable case with a realistic prospect of success. This must be read alongside the wider barriers: prohibitive specialist legal and economic costs, together with adverse-cost risk, which could prevent CCW from participating meaningfully even where a case raises substantial consumer harm. The permission process and early cost protection must therefore be designed together.
CCW would only support the new appeal replacing Water Redeterminations if DBT first demonstrates that transfer would produce better outcomes for consumers than a focused CMA appeal. We support replacing the current broad redetermination with focused review for material error, but the institution responsible for the redetermination should follow the evidence. In particular, government must demonstrate that the CAT can combine legal discipline with the technical, economic and water-sector expertise needed to scrutinise regulatory judgement.
The government should compare the CAT proposal with retaining the CMA under a revised statutory appeal model. The comparison should cover expertise, institutional knowledge, independence, capacity, costs, accessibility for consumer bodies, likely duration, risk of further appeals, and the quality and speed of remedies.
The consultation does not quantify how much quicker a CAT process would be. DBT should set out target times for permission and final judgment and compare them with the statutory and actual timetables for CMA redeterminations. It should also account for remittal to Ofwat and possible appeals on points of law. A shorter hearing that leads to prolonged remittal or further lengthy litigation would not necessarily resolve uncertainty sooner.
If DBT selects the CAT, it should establish panels with appropriate economic and water sector expertise, sufficient analytical support, firm case-management timetables and an evaluation after the first appeals. If these conditions cannot be secured, retaining the CMA with a narrower, more focussed appeal remit, and introduction of a right of appeal for CCW would be preferable.
Only if existing public interest and consumer safeguards are preserved. The consultation distinguishes water price redeterminations, where the CMA takes a fresh decision on the whole price review, from other water regulatory references that expressly examine whether specific matters operate against the public interest. Any replacement should require the appeal body to consider relevant public interest and consumer effects.
Yes, provided harmonisation establishes a minimum level of consumer access and does not remove stronger sector specific rights. For water, the legislation should expressly name CCW as a body eligible to seek permission to appeal:
- Ofwat price review decisions where an arguable material error risks significant consumer detriment
- Ofwat decisions on revisions, or decisions not to revise following the relevant consultation, to the designated Wholesale-Retail Code and Market Arrangements Code where those decisions are otherwise appealable.
Harmonisation should not inadvertently narrow existing water appeal routes.
Yes, with clear limits. CCW should be expressly designated as eligible to seek permission to appeal:
- A water price control decision
- An appealable Ofwat decisions on the Wholesale Retail Code and Market Arrangements Code
Eligibility should cover an alleged material error that has caused, or creates a real risk of causing, significant detriment to consumers collectively or to a substantial or particularly vulnerable group. This should not depend on showing that each represented consumer is individually and directly affected.
This right is needed for three linked reasons:
- Consumer trust in the water sector is low and stronger independent accountability can help rebuild confidence.
- There is a structural asymmetry because companies have established appeal rights and substantially greater legal and economic resources than customers via the statutory consumer body.
- There should be greater parity across regulated markets, including with energy, where Citizens Advice can itself bring a relevant regulatory appeal.
A permission test would ensure that this additional consumer safeguard is reserved for arguable, material errors rather than disagreements over policy or judgement.
Yes. Permission should require: an arguable specified error; a realistic prospect of success; material significance; and, for representative bodies, a genuine connection to the interests represented. The CAT should ensure that there is a robust permission process so it can refuse cases that are abusive, repetitive, brought for delay, unsupported by evidence or attempts to relitigate points reasonably resolved during the price review.
The CAT should decide permission promptly and give reasons. Any sanctions for unreasonable conduct should not undermine protected, good-faith participation by statutory consumer bodies.
Yes. CCW should be entitled to seek permission to intervene wherever an appeal may materially affect water consumers, including bills, affordability, service, investment, environmental outcomes or resilience. Intervention should not be confined to cases in which CCW alleges a separate regulatory error. CCW may add value by explaining the consumer implications of grounds advanced by another party or of a proposed remedy.
The principal barriers are:
- The cost of specialist legal, regulatory, financial and economic advice
- Potential exposure to the costs of companies and regulators
- The cost of losing after committing limited public resources
- The staff time needed for complex litigation
- Information asymmetry where a consumer group’s access to confidential material may be restricted
- The risk that prolonged proceedings divert CCW resources from complaints handling and its other statutory functions
The framework should provide:
- Express statutory standing for CCW
- Early permission decisions based on proportionate evidence
- Cost caps decided at or before permission
- Proportionate case filing, disclosure and expert evidence requirements
- Access to necessary information through workable confidentiality arrangements
- Powers to limit an appeal or intervention to specified issues
- A published timetable
- The ability to make written submissions without attendance at every procedural hearing
The government should consider a modest central fund or recoverable levy funded arrangement for exceptional consumer appeals, provided it is independent and cannot be controlled by the regulator or companies whose decision is challenged.
Yes. CCW strongly supports an asymmetric costs regime for designated statutory consumer bodies. CCW’s potential liability for other parties’ costs should be capped at a low and predictable amount when it acts reasonably, while the recoverable costs payable to CCW if successful should not be subject to the same low cap. This is justified by the structural power and resource asymmetry between water companies and the statutory consumer body. Companies can deploy substantially greater legal, financial and economic resources and can ultimately recover efficient regulatory costs through the sector, whereas exposing CCW to comparable litigation risk could make a statutory consumer appeal right unusable in practice.
The cap should be set before expenditure and should cover the permission stage, the appeal process and intervention. It should not depend on the case ultimately succeeding.
Yes. Cost rules should recognise that regulator and company costs may ultimately be borne by consumers. Consumers should not routinely fund both sides of repeated or unsuccessful industry challenges.
DBT should provide an explicit costs mechanism in the legislation and/or CAT Rules, enabling the appeal body to order an unsuccessful commercial appellant to meet an appropriate share of the regulator’s reasonable appeal costs. The framework should also require the regulator to explain how any unrecovered appeal costs will be treated and should prevent those costs being automatically passed through to customers. We are therefore asking government to ensure that this power and customer safeguard exist and are workable under the reformed regime, rather than assuming that the CAT can already achieve the full outcome proposed.
Reform should include an explicit public interest safeguard. At permission and remedy stages, the appeal body should consider the nature, scale, distribution and duration of effects on current and future consumers, including vulnerable customers, as well as affordability, essential service delivery, environmental obligations and resilience.
The primary question should remain whether there is a material regulatory error. The public interest assessment should inform whether the matter merits determination, how urgently it should proceed and what remedy is appropriate.
The price review itself should resolve as many disputes as possible. Ofwat should have a duty to ‘comply or explain’ its approach to material CCW recommendations, explain how it has balanced consumer evidence and provide an opportunity for CCW to assess significant changes between draft and final determinations. Appeal should be a backstop, not a routine extra stage.
The test of reform is not whether responsibility moves from one institution to another, or whether a hearing itself is shorter. It is whether material errors are corrected sooner, regulatory accountability is preserved, consumer bodies can participate on fair terms, and final decisions deliver fairer outcomes without prolonged uncertainty.
Responses to chapter 3: More efficient Competition Act Enforcement
We focus below on the key issues raised by the proposed reforms from a consumer perspective, rather than responding to each of the detailed consultation questions, in line with CCW’s role as a consumer body.
CCW supports the objective of faster and more efficient Competition Act enforcement. As with Chapter 1, these proposals are not sector-specific, so the central consumer test is whether enforcement becomes quicker and more effective without weakening procedural fairness, transparency, deterrence or redress. Reform should build confidence that competition rules protect customers and produce better market outcomes, not simply reduce process for businesses.
The practical interaction with England’s non-household water retail market nevertheless needs to be explicit. This is the only part of the water sector in England where most business customers have competitive choice of retailer, and Ofwat already has concurrent Competition Act powers within a sector-specific framework involving Ofwat, MOSL, the Wholesale Retail Code and Market Arrangements Code and customer protection rules.
CCW broadly agrees with the proposed streamlining but only with safeguards. Greater flexibility may improve efficiency, but minimum requirements for independent decision making, clear reasons for decisions, and consultation should remain enforceable. Guidance to all parties on the CMA’s decision-making model should be consulted on and departures from it explained. Revised settlement procedures should not obscure the evidence, harm or remedy.