About our Guaranteed Standards Scheme
We are committed to providing you with the best possible service. This commitment is backed up by our Customer Guarantee Scheme, as summarised below. If we fail to meet one of these guarantees, we will pay you the amount shown.
Appointments
When we arrange an appointment with you, we will tell you whether we will arrive before or after 1pm. If possible, we may give you a two-hour time band for the visit. In the unlikely event that we have to cancel the appointment, we will give you at least 24 hours notice. Please note, appointments are not usually made for emergency visits as this could delay our attendance.
If for any reason we fail to attend within the times promised, or if we cancel with less than 24 hours notice, we will automatically pay you £50 in each case.
Responding to written complaints
If you write to complain about our water or wastewater services, we will send our reply within ten working days of receiving your letter. If we take longer than ten working days to send our reply we will automatically pay you £30.
Billing queries
If you write to us to query the accuracy of your account, we aim to send a reply within ten working days. If we take longer than this we will automatically pay you £30. If you write to ask us to change your payment arrangement, we will act on this as quickly as possible. If we are unable to carry out your request and do not send our reply to you within five working days, we will automatically pay you £30.
Services for customers requiring additional assistance
We will respond to written enquiries about our Special Needs Services within five working days of receipt. We will also process applications within five working days of receipt. If we do not do this, we will automatically pay you £20.
Interruptions to your water supply
We sometimes have to interrupt your water supply to repair leaks, connect new customers or make improvements to our system. We will give 48 hours written notice if a planned interruption to your supply is going to last more than four hours. We will also tell you when we expect the supply to be restored.
If there is an unplanned interruption, for example when a water main bursts, we will put your water supply back on within 12 hours of knowing about this problem. If a larger "strategic" main bursts, we guarantee to fix it within 48 hours. We can't give any warning of unplanned interruptions but we will tell you when your supply will be restored as soon as we can. If we do not give you advance notice of planned interruptions, or we fail to restore your supply within the time promised, we will automatically pay our domestic customers £30 and our business customers £50. For each extra 24-hour period that you have no water, we will pay an additional £10 to domestic customers and £25 to business customers.
Low pressure
If the water pressure in our pipework serving your property (which usually ends at the boundary stop tap or edge of the street) falls below "seven metres static head", in other words, 70 per cent of our normal minimum level of service), you can claim £30. You must have experienced loss of pressure twice in a 28-day period and the loss of pressure must have lasted more than one hour on each occasion. You can only receive one payment under this guarantee in any financial year. This guarantee does not apply if the low pressure is caused by essential work we have to do to our own supply network or through drought conditions.
Restriction of use notices
If we have to issue you a restriction of use notice as a result of problems with our water supply, we will automatically make a payment of £30 to you, each time this happens.
Flooding from sewers
If our sewer overflows and wastewater gets into your building or beneath a suspended floor, you will automatically receive a payment or credit equal to your wastewater charges for the year of the flooding, each time this happens, with a minimum payment of £150 up to a maximum of £1,000.
If our sewer overflows and wastewater gets onto your land but does not enter into your building as described above, you will be entitled to claim a payment or credit equal to half your wastewater charges for the year of the flooding, each time this happens, with a minimum payment of £75 and a maximum of £500.
As part of your claim for external sewer flooding you will need to prove that you have experienced actual loss, damage, or serious loss of amenity.
This guarantee does not apply if the flooding was caused by exceptional weather conditions or problems with your own pipework.
Payments and credits
For broken appointments, written complaints, billing enquiries and written Special Needs Services enquiries, we will make the payment to you within ten working days of it becoming due. In all other cases, payment will be made within 20 working days of the incident. If we do not make the payment automatically, a penalty payment may also be due.
We will normally make the payment by adding a credit to your account, or we will send you a cheque if you do not have an account with us.
Further information on our Guarantees, and Codes of Practice, is available in our literature section.
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