News
10 Years Of Success For Scottish Retail Water Market
While the English retail water market may have only just opened its doors a year ago, its Scottish equivalent has been enjoying success for the last decade – just celebrating its ten-year anniversary at the start of April.
Commenting on the news, a spokesman from the Scottish government noted that the country has a “dynamic retail market” that offers its customers far-reaching opportunities. There is also a robust, independent regulatory processes in place to help support the water industry’s performance and make sure that the retail market remains fully competitive, Utility Week reports.
The Scottish market’s first non-domestic retailer was Business Stream, a company that was set up back in 2006 as a subsidiary of Scottish Water. It expanded its operations in April last year after acquiring the business customer base of Southern Water after the English market opened.
Since opening, Business Stream says it has delivered over £160 million in savings to customers. Chief executive Jo Dow was quoted by the news source as saying: “It’s a fantastic achievement to be celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Scottish market and, simultaneously, the first anniversary of the English market.
“It’s been an exciting time for the water industry and I’m proud of the role we have played, advocating competition for customers and delivering over £160 million of benefits for our customers to date. Our focus now is on the next decade and ensuring that we continue to evolve and enhance our services and solutions in line with our customers’ needs.”
Figures from Ofwat show that, where the English retail market is concerned, around £200 million will be contributed to the UK economy as a result, as well as helping to drive significant environmental benefits. These include improving water efficiency, driving down prices and encouraging innovation, as well as improving customer service.
It’s worth noting that, as a business, you can now choose your own supplier of water and wastewater services in England – so you should be able to negotiate the best commercial water services package to suit your individual needs.
For those companies with above-average water use (in excess of 30,000 m3 a year on single sites like leisure parks, hospitals, universities and hotels), here at H2O Building Services we can offer discounts on water supply contracts of 25 per cent – a first in the English water retail market.
We have numerous packages available, all tailored to ensure our clients get the best value deals they can. We’ll compile a water and wastewater database that uses historical water billing data to give us a better idea of billing in the past and to date. We’ll then carry out a water audit to see if there have been any under or overcharges on your account.
And once the report has been agreed upon, we then complete all work to deliver water audit savings and refunds, as well as updating the water database to demonstrate how savings and refunds have been delivered. This billing data will then be sent to all relevant water suppliers based on the client’s criteria.