For over ten years CCW's annual tracking research, Water Matters, has examined the views of household water customers including the long-term trends. For the last three years, CCW has produced a highlights report that examines the key themes of the data and makes recommendations on how companies can take action.
This time they have continued to look at the themes that were highlighted in previous years, but also reflected on the events of an extraordinary 12 months. Examining the results in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was ongoing while the research was taking place.
The pandemic meant that there are several new contexts for examining this year’s figures:
- The effects of measures taken to curb the spread of Covid-19 have affected the finances of customers across England and Wales. In turn, this may affect their responses in several areas, such as affordability and satisfaction with value for money.
- Household customers’ water use went up across England and Wales because more people were at home during the pandemic. This means that metered customers will have had bills that were higher than for the same period in the previous year. Again, this may have influenced the answers to some of the survey questions.
- Covid-19 may have also affected water companies’ abilities to engage with customers on a day-to-day level. Companies had to reduce or even suspend some face-to-face activities to ensure that their staff and customers were able to comply with government instructions on Covid-19.
There was emerging evidence from several sources that some sectors of society are more affected by resulting changes in finances and water bills than others and this is reflected in CCW's own research ‘low-income households’ experiences of water bill affordability and support’.
