YORKSHIRE Water has made changes to its complaints procedure after “inadvertently” pushing customers to a watchdog, according to a report.
Across England and Wales, the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) said complaints escalated to it by household customers rose for the third year running – up to 8,235 in 2024-25 from 7,977 in 2023-24.
This was despite a more encouraging eight per cent fall in the overall number of complaints made by households to water companies, down to 205,853 compared with 222,956 in the previous year.
Customers must give their water company two chances to resolve an issue, after which they can escalate it to CCW for review.
CCW named Bradford-based Yorkshire Water, Thames Water, South West Water, Affinity Water and SES Water as the poorest performing firms based on complaints it received over the last year.
In its report released today, the CCW explained Yorkshire Water “realised it was inadvertently pushing its customers to CCW” before approaching issues directly, and corrected this in late-2024.
“Since taking this action, there has been a decline in the number of customers coming to CCW for help with their issue,” the report said.
“Yorkshire Water continues to review its customer complaint processes and we hope that those changes will in turn see more complaints resolved at the first stage of the process, so reducing the number of stage two complaints, and further decreasing the number of customers who come to CCW.
“Whilst things may go wrong, putting a matter right first time can leave a customer with a positive impression of a company, and we would like to see this for Yorkshire Water customers.”
Imran Patel, director of customer experience, Yorkshire Water, said: “We have been working closely with CCW for some time on the complaints procedure and 99.93 per cent of customers who contact us have their queries resolved without any complaint to CCW.
“While this illustrates the strength of our customer service, we know there is still work to do to improve customers’ experience and rebuild trust.
“We are determined through our largest ever investment period, £8.3 billion between 2025 and 2030, to make improvements across all of our operations that will have long-term benefits for the services and customer experience our customers’ will receive.
“Our complaint process is rigorous, compliance-led, and validated by both independent auditors and CCW.
“There remains a lack of consistency in how complaints are reported and assured across the sector and therefore comparing the performance of companies can be difficult.
“We have raised this issue with CCW and are actively working together to help simplify guidance and ensure consistent application of the guidance across the industry.”
