Anglian Water PR19 Executive Summary: Reply to Ofwat's
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Anglian Water PR19 Executive Summary: Reply to Ofwat's Response to Anglian's Statement of Case 1 Overarching Comments (1) Part 1 of this Executive Summary sets out some overarching comments that are relevant for the CMA's consideration of Ofwat's Response in the round. 1.1 Anglian Water: a company with social and environmental purpose at its heart (2) Anglian does not recognise the company which Ofwat has portrayed to the CMA in its response to the Company's Statement of Case ("SOC") and in its subsequent presentation. Ofwat has sought to portray Anglian as being focused on gaming the regulatory regime, paying very large and unjustified dividends to shareholders, and seeking additional costs only to pay dividends in AMP7. It sums this up by claiming that "Anglian Water's case is that customers should pay more and receive less".1 (3) In fact, Anglian's Business Plan would have enabled customers to pay less in bills, whilst receiving more. Its Plan is focused on doing the right thing for customers and the environment, now and in the future, and is in line with customers' clearly expressed preferences. Ofwat's FD, by contrast, would give customers less of what they want, and force Anglian to implement a series of sub-optimal short-term solutions that will, in the long-term, cause overall costs to be greater. Future customers will be left facing bigger costs, and bigger risks, than they should. (4) Anglian is a leading performer overall in the sector, innovating to become the industry-leader on leakage reduction, leading on drinking water quality measures and capital carbon reduction, highly regarded by peers, stakeholders, its supply chain and most importantly its customers and colleagues. Its suite of external awards and endorsements recognise these achievements, including being recognised as a responsible business and leading the way in embedding social and environmental purpose in its constitution. (5) Anglian's track record shows it has paid dividends to shareholders when it has delivered strong performance against the regulatory contract. This is precisely the outcome that the incentive-based regulation system aims to deliver, and sees customers also benefiting when a company performs well, in four main ways: (i) firstly, they receive a higher standard of service; (ii) secondly, they directly share in the benefits of the outperformance of the regulatory contract; (iii) thirdly, the efficiencies delivered are then baked into a lower cost base for future price reviews and have enabled reinvestment into the business with the support of shareholders; and (iv) fourthly, the innovations made to drive frontier performance are shared with other companies, so bringing benefits to customers across England and Wales. (6) For many years Anglian has worked hard to do the right thing, achieving a balance between the legitimate interests of its owners and the delivery of good outcomes for customers and the environment, serving a region that is the most water-stressed in the UK and growing rapidly. (7) This approach has been "locked in" following a change to Anglian's Articles of Association last year, which embedded social and environmental purpose into the articles that govern its management, and created a “North Star” for all decision-making, including the one the Board took to seek a reference to the CMA. (8) Anglian's Business Plan is rooted in an assessment of the long-term context, as set out in its Strategic Direction Statement. This is very much in line with the priorities set out by Government in its formal 1 Response to Anglian, para. 1.3. 2 Executive Summary: Reply to Ofwat's Response to Anglian’s SOC guidance to Ofwat, and with Ofwat's new Resilience Duty. Anglian's AMP7 plan builds on its AMP6 plan which delivered the biggest bill reduction in the sector at PR14. (9) Anglian's Plan seeks to get on with addressing resilience rather than “kicking the can down the road”. The related increase in scope necessarily sees costs higher than at PR14, but this step change is in line with customer preferences, Government policy, and Ofwat's Resilience Duty. Moreover, taking action now represents better value for money in the long run, a point made clearly in the National Infrastructure Commission's 2018 Report, "Preparing for a Drier Future", which concluded that delay in taking action to boost supply resilience to drought would lead to a near doubling of costs over the next 30 years.2 (10) As explained in the SOC, when assessed in the round, the overall balance of risk and return created by the FD is strongly skewed to the downside.3 This creates problems which manifest themselves in all of the key areas of the financing decisions in the FD: an inadequate level of WACC, an FD that does not meet the financeability test for the notional company, an incorrect allocation of allowed funds between opex and capex, and a penal Gearing Outperformance Sharing Mechanism. Anglian and the other appellants are not alone in considering that Ofwat has erred in its approach to balance of risk and return; this point has been made in a number of third-party representations made to the CMA. (11) Anglian recognises the twin demands of investing for resilience and ensuring affordability in its Plan for those struggling to pay or otherwise vulnerable. It remains of the view that a redetermination that upheld its Plan would meet both objectives: allowing a significant increase in support for those struggling to pay (expected to be a larger proportion of customers in the wake of Covid-19), while also allowing a step-change in investment for resilience. 1.2 Covid-19 (12) In previous correspondence Anglian has expressed the desire to find early resolution to the redetermination process to allow all parties to focus on responding to Covid-19 and ensuring customers continue to receive essential services. (13) Regrettably, Ofwat seems to have concluded that, despite the huge amount of evidence and expert reports submitted in the SOCs, there are almost no points that any party has raised that merit any adjustment to its FD position. This inflexible position seems to close the door on finding a way forward to early resolution. Anglian has, however, indicated to the CMA that it would be happy to consider some workshops on certain methodological issues that concern all disputing companies, to assist the CMA in formulating its redetermination. (14) Anglian is writing separately to the CMA to set out early views on impacts on the business of Covid-19. In particular, Anglian notes that the diminution of revenues worsens the position on financeability and its ability to maintain a Baa1 credit rating, which the FD already undermines. Covid-19 impacts, which are outside management control, also have a more negative effect on Anglian because of the punitive cost-sharing ratios the FD has imposed, making it more difficult to minimise impacts on customers during the pandemic. Anglian seeks no special favours, but the crisis makes it all the more urgent to correct the mistakes in Ofwat's FD. 1.3 Anglian's approach to preparing its Reply to Ofwat's Response (15) Anglian recognises the scale of the task before the CMA, and the large volume of materials already submitted to it. With that in mind, this Reply to Ofwat's Response has been kept as concise as possible. 2 NIC Preparing for a Drier Future Report, page 21 (SOC270). 3 Anglian's SOC, Chapter A: Executive Summary, para. 105. 3 Executive Summary: Reply to Ofwat's Response to Anglian’s SOC (16) To help the CMA, the key points from Ofwat's Response are summarised in a table. This references each point made, Anglian's response to it, and where the evidence to support the response can be found (either already within Anglian's SOC or included as part of this Reply). The table also highlights where Ofwat has not addressed relevant evidence set out in the SOC. (17) Inevitably, this Reply focuses on Ofwat's Response document. However, where possible Anglian draws attention to ways in which the CMA could seek to resolve the issues identified, in its redetermination. (18) Clearly, different statements have been made to the CMA regarding the level of cost increase compared to AMP6 that Anglian is seeking. This is an important issue, and Anglian proposes that the CMA could seek to resolve this specific question as part of the preliminary phases of its work, taking on board feedback from all relevant parties, before it reaches its provisional findings. 1.4 Setting the record straight (19) Before turning to the detail of its Reply, Anglian would like to highlight a number of aspects of Ofwat's Response where Anglian believes Ofwat has mischaracterised important points and/or has invited the CMA to draw inferences which, in Anglian's view, are not the appropriate views to form when all of the facts and data are understood. These include the following: Table 1 Correcting mischaracterisations Ofwat Assertion Anglian's Position Anglian has a track record of high Ofwat is aware that the dividend figures which it used in dividends and has paid extraordinarily support of this claim5 include both intra-group payments of high dividends over the last 10 years, £192 million annually, and a special intra-group payment of with an average gross annual nominal £1.6 billion (which Ofwat acknowledges to have been made dividend return on actual equity of in 2018 to settle an intercompany loan and to simplify the around 35%.4 Company's accounts in its drive to improve transparency). Neither of these payments ever left the Group.