Households escalated a record number of complaints about water companies to the industry watchdog last year, with cases up 84 per cent in a single year, the Consumer Council for Water said in its annual household complaints report published on Wednesday.
The CCW received 15,115 escalated complaints in 2025-26, up from 8,235 the previous year. The consumer watchdog for the sector said the jump was the largest in its 20-year history, driven by customer concern and confusion over rising bills. Direct complaints to the companies themselves also rose, up 56 per cent year on year, the BBC reported.
The arithmetic of the bills explains most of it. Households have been moving onto steep new tariffs as companies recover the cost of infrastructure investment and, in several cases, regulator-imposed penalties. Customers who had budgeted for one figure on their letter were met with another when payment plans reset. Billing errors compounded the confusion: misapplied water meter readings, accounts chased in the wrong name, and support schemes customers did not know existed.
The report graded individual companies on how they handled complaints, and Thames Water and South West Water received the weakest ratings, both firms already under intense scrutiny for spending and leakage. Others, including several regional operators, were rated as performing reasonably or well, a reminder that the sector’s customer service problem is uneven rather than universal.
For businesses the lesson is about billing governance. Water is the utility least likely to be challenged on invoice errors, and the CCW’s finding that confusion, not just cost, drove escalation suggests that companies of all sizes should audit what they are paying against actual consumption, particularly sites with multiple meters or vacant properties on the account.
The watchdog’s recommendations to the industry focus on getting the basics right early: clear bills, proactive contact when charges change, and complaint handling that fixes the problem rather than logging it. Parliament’s concerns about the water sector are unlikely to fade soon, with the ongoing scrutiny of company finances and environmental performance keeping every metric the CCW publishes under a microscope.
