Review of CCW’s company assessments – 2025-26
CCW carries out assessments of water and sewerage companies to see how they deal with customer cases when we’re not directly involved. This helps us be the voice for all water consumers, not just those who ask for our help.
Our assessments provide:
- Assurance that water companies follow processes and guidelines consistently
- A way to capture and share focus areas and good practices across the industry to improve service to consumers
- An up-to-date view of what good looks like
CCW assessments – what’s involved
A small team of CCW staff spends two days in person with water company customer service team members at the company’s premises. We randomly select complaint cases from a recent period and review them from start to finish with the company’s personnel.
We assess:
- Process: How the company follows its own published processes and CCW’s household complaints guidance
- Culture: How the company’s culture is reflected in the service provided to customers
CCW gives feedback in person at the end of the second day of the assessment. We also send a detailed report to the water company two weeks later.
Which companies CCW has assessed (as of March 2026)
In 2025-26, CCW has carried out:
- 17 water company complaint assessments
- 5 water company debt assessments
- 5 water company incident assessments – we will publish a report of our findings later in 2026-2027.
Since CCW reintroduced our assessments in 2024-25, we have also carried out 5 complaints assessments with water retailers.
How CCW reports on its assessment findings
Every quarter, CCW publishes the reports for each water company it assessed in the previous quarter.
There are two sections for each company assessment:
- Good practice: A summary of the areas where companies demonstrated good customer service that should be continued and shared across the industry
- Areas of focus: A summary of the areas CCW identified during the assessment that companies should focus on to improve customer service
CCW follows up these findings through regular meetings with companies, backed up by insights from our own complaint handling work.
Trends from CCW’s 2025-2026 assessments
Good practice
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Focus on improving service for customers
CCW was heartened by water companies’ willingness to engage with our assessment process and the drive to do the right thing for customers. Positive conversations between CCW and water companies have continued through our day-to-day engagement, performance meetings and complaint forums. -
Generally strong call handling
During assessments, CCW teams consistently hear complex calls being handled in an informative, level-headed and clear manner. The empathetic and knowledgeable staff that companies have on the phones helps foster understanding and get to the root of any issues so that they can be resolved. -
Clear written responses
Although consistency remains an issue, we found written responses that were customer-friendly in both structure and tone. These provide clarity and reduce the need for customers to make follow-up contacts. -
Explaining and jargon-busting
The water industry can be jargon-heavy and it is reassuring to see many companies working hard to remove this aspect from customer communications, both in writing and by phone. -
Using insight to provide financial support
In our debt assessments, CCW is seeing positive evidence of companies utilising credit reference data, along with other sources of information, to proactively identify and assist customers in financial difficulty.
Areas that water companies should focus on
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Vulnerable customers
In all our assessments, CCW strongly advocates that companies introduce specialist teams to work with customers who need extra support through the complaints process. CCW’s own Dedicated Support Team is having a huge impact in providing tailored help to our customers. -
Case management through a dedicated contact
CCW is pressing companies to consistently adopt a structured approach to case management through a dedicated contact, from first contact to last. We recommend companies focus on the principle of customers only having to make one inbound contact, with cases being managed from that point. -
Clear timescales and information on next steps
CCW is challenging water companies to provide clear messages to customers regarding what happens next and when. Customer effort is being unnecessarily increased due to uncertainty over actions and timescales, with examples of people having to contact the company multiple times to get clarity and chase expected contacts. -
Clear outcomes and signposting at the right time
In 2025-26, CCW reviewed many cases where customers could not be assisted by the company any further and it was appropriate to move the process on to the next step of the complaints procedure – which is referral to CCW. This needs to be done in a clear and consistent manner to avoid further customer effort. -
Keeping complaints open on the system and closing the loop with customers
CCW is challenging all water companies to ensure that they adhere to the household complaints guidance. Our assessments are providing evidence of companies closing complaints on their systems prematurely. More often than not, actions and customer contact continued, but closing cases too early leads to more customer effort and a longer drawn-out process to get resolution.
CCW’s commitments for 2026-2027
- CCW will continue doing complaint assessments with water companies, using them as an iterative yearly check-in.
- Alongside this, we will continue doing debt and incident assessments with each company once every three years.
- CCW will carry out six vulnerability assessments with companies.
- We will do assessments with at least two retailers.
- Using input from the water sector, CCW will develop new focussed, on-demand company assessments that address specific topics.