16 Year End Report on Consumer Complaints and Enquiries

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16 Year End Report on Consumer Complaints and Enquiries End of Year Complaints and Enquiries Report 1 April 2015 – 31 March 2016 July 2016 1 End of Year 2015-16 Report on Consumer Complaints and Enquiries CONSUMER COUNCIL FOR WATER END OF YEAR REPORT ON CONSUMER COMPLAINTS AND ENQUIRIES 1 April 2015 – 31 March 2016 Table of Contents 1. Purpose of report................................................................................................................ 3 2. Recommendations ............................................................................................................... 3 3. Report Summary ................................................................................................................. 4 4. Company actions, policy changes, hot topics and issues identified by CCWater .................................... 6 4.1 Company Updates – Quarter four (January - March 2016) ............................................................ 6 4.1.1 Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water .............................................................................................. 6 4.1.2 Severn Trent ............................................................................................................ 6 4.1.3 Southern Water ......................................................................................................... 6 4.1.4 Sutton and East Surrey Water ........................................................................................ 7 4.1.5 South West Water ...................................................................................................... 7 4.1.6 Thames Water .......................................................................................................... 7 4.1.7 United Utilities ......................................................................................................... 7 4.1.8 Complaints Action Log ................................................................................................ 7 4.2 Complaint and Debt Assessments ......................................................................................... 8 4.3 Company Policy changes in 2015-16 ....................................................................................... 8 5. Complaints........................................................................................................................ 9 5.1 Complaint Numbers .......................................................................................................... 9 5.2 Complaint Handling ......................................................................................................... 12 5.3 Complaint Categories ....................................................................................................... 15 5.4 Vulnerable customers ...................................................................................................... 17 5.5 Contact Methods ............................................................................................................ 17 5.6 Consumer Support Site ..................................................................................................... 18 5.7 Complaint Outcomes ....................................................................................................... 19 5.8 Consumer Satisfaction ...................................................................................................... 21 5.9 Performance ................................................................................................................. 22 5.10 WATRS ...................................................................................................................... 22 5.11 Six-month Review of WATRS ........................................................................................... 24 6. Enquiries ......................................................................................................................... 25 6.1 Enquiry numbers............................................................................................................. 25 6.2 Enquiry categories .......................................................................................................... 26 6.3 Enquiry contact methods .................................................................................................. 27 7. Resource Implications ......................................................................................................... 27 8. Risk management .............................................................................................................. 28 2 End of Year 2015-16 Report on Consumer Complaints and Enquiries CONSUMER COUNCIL FOR WATER END OF YEAR REPORT ON CONSUMER COMPLAINTS AND ENQUIRIES 1 April 2015 – 31 March 2016 Report of: Head of Consumer Relations 1. Purpose of report 1.1 To inform the Board of our complaint and enquiry numbers and comment on our performance and consumer satisfaction achieved during 2015-16. 1.2 To identify company complaint trends and to provide information for Chairs, Local Consumer Advocates (LCAs) and staff to discuss identified issues and agreed future actions with local companies. 2. Recommendations 2.1 The Board is asked to: note the report, use the report information to capitalise on joint working between staff, Chairs and LCAs to challenge or congratulate companies where appropriate, and feedback any key issues arising from the paper to the Head of Consumer Relations for further follow up action, including if further information is required. 3 End of Year 2015-16 Report on Consumer Complaints and Enquiries 3. Report Summary Complaints about water companies 3.1 Consumer complaints about water companies to CCWater decreased by 1% from 10,135 in 2014-15 to 9,991 in 2015-16. 3.2 When measuring complaints per 10,000 connections, the most complained about companies were Southern Water, South West Water and United Utilities. Wessex Water received the fewest complaints of any water and sewerage company. Investigations 3.3 We opened 19 investigations in 2015-16, two fewer than in 2014-15. A further six investigations were opened but later retracted following an appeal from the company. The investigations were of United Utilities (six investigations), Thames Water (four), Anglian Water (three), and one investigation each against Severn Trent, Southern Water, Dŵr Cymru, Yorkshire Water, Sutton and East Surrey Water and SSE Water (a NAV). Complaints about CCWater 3.4 We received nine complaints about our complaint handling that we escalated for review in 2015-16, compared to seven last year. We completed four reviews in the year, compared to ten last year. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman investigated one complaint against CCWater, which it partially upheld. Complaint categories 3.5 Billing and charges continued to be the most common cause of complaint to CCWater, accounting for 53% of all complaints we received. The most common root cause of complaint was disputed liability of a measured bill (10% of all complaints), debt recovery (8% of all complaints) and surface water / highways drainage charges (3% of all complaints). 3.6 Nine percent of the complaints that CCWater handled were from non-household consumers, one percent were from mixed use (both domestic and non-domestic properties) and the remaining 90% were from households. The percentage of non-household connections in England and Wales is around six percent. Financial Redress 3.7 We secured £1.9m of financial redress for consumers in 2015-16. This is £375,000 less than in 2014-15. The redress equates to £194 per complaint handled. WATRS 3.8 We closed 1,509 cases where customers were eligible to approach WATRS (the Water Redress Scheme) in 2015-16. There are no figures from 2014-15 to compare to as this is the first year of WATRS’ operation. Of the 1,509 eligible cases, 287 consumers asked us for a reference number to approach the scheme and to date 138 consumers have done so. Of these applications, 45 have been successful in part (no case has been completely successful). Performance & satisfaction 3.9 Our performance against the 5-day acknowledgement of complaints target has remained static at 99.9% (0.9 points above the OBP target of 99.0%). Our performance in 20-day complaint closures has decreased by 0.2 percentage points to 82.4% (but is still 4.4 points above our OBP target of 78%). Our performance in 40- day closures increased, by 0.3 percentage points, to 92.6% (2.6 points above our OBP target of 90%). 3.10 Consumer satisfaction with service, outcome and speed increased compared to 2014-15. Satisfaction with service was 74% (73% last year) against an Operational Business Plan (OBP) target of 72%, outcome was 60% (58% last year) against an OBP target of 58%, speed was 81% (80% last year) against an OBP target of 79% and courtesy was 93% (93% last year) against an OBP target of 90%. 4 End of Year 2015-16 Report on Consumer Complaints and Enquiries Consumer Support Site 3.11 There were over 93,000 unique consumer visits to our support website in 2015-16. Less than 2% of visitors needed to make a complaint or enquiry to us. Most people found the information they required with no impact on our staff resources. Enquiries 3.12 We received more enquiries in 2015-16 than in 2014-15, up 6% (485 enquiries) from 7,968 to 8,453. There was a decrease in the majority of enquiry categories with only “other” enquiries and contact details enquiries seeing a rise, contact details rising by 109%. The increase was related to enquiries about almost all companies. This has been driven by
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