Citizens Advice response to CCW’s Strategy 2021-24

Citizens Advice response to CCW’s Strategy 2021-24

We welcome the opportunity to respond to this consultation. As the statutory representative for energy consumers across Great Britain, our response is informed by our insight from providing advice to people through our network of local Citizens Advice and through our national consumer service helpline.

Water is an essential service. In the 12 months to July 2020, Citizens Advice advised over 74,000 people in person, by phone or by email about water supply and sewerage debts, and the relevant advice pages had over 220,000 unique web page views. Our data shows that the most common reasons people come to us for advice on water are those that impact their household finances. This mirrors the trend in written complaints by household customers to water companies, where over half are about charging and billing issues.

In its draft strategy, CCW has set out work in some important areas that we are keen to support where possible. We have also set out where we think CCW could most helpfully focus within the current priorities, and areas of importance that we think it should also cover.