CCW has today published the summaries of the latest wave of complaint and debt assessments with water companies for Quarter 4 2025-26. 

Each quarter, CCW publishes the reports for each company assessed in the previous quarter. There are two sections for each company as follows:

• Good practice: Summary of the areas where companies demonstrated good customer service that should be continued and shared across the industry
• Areas of focus: Summary of the areas identified during the assessment that companies will focus on to improve customer service 

CCW follows up the area of focus with quarterly meetings, insights from complaint handling and yearly assessment.

The latest summaries cover the 25-26 quarter 4 complaints assessments with:

• Northumbrian/Essex and Suffolk Water
• South East Water
• South Staffs and Cambridge Water
• Severn Trent Water
• Wessex Water

CCW has also published two summaries of the debt assessments with:

• Affinity Water
• Thames Water

The consumer watchdog carries out assessments and spends two days in-person with water and sewerage companies to see how they deal with customer cases when CCW is not directly involved. CCW randomly selectscomplaint cases from a recent period and review them from start to finish with company personnel.

The assessments cover:

• Process: How the company follows its published processes and the household complaints guidance
• Culture: How the company’s culture is reflected in the service provided to customers

CCW gives feedback in-person at the end of day two of the assessment and in a detailed report sent to each company two weeks later.

The assessments provide:

• Assurance that companies follow processes and guidelines consistently
• A way to capture and share focus areas and good practices across the industry to improve service to consumers
• An up-to-date view of what good looks like

Jon Johnson, Head of Customer Experience at CCW, commented:

"Water companies have really embraced the opportunity to improve their complaint and debt handling through the sharing of good practice and taking on board our observations. Overall we've seen some really good outbound contact, with many companies adopting a 'phone first' approach to understand customers' concerns through conversation rather than written communication. We're really encouraged to see some companies also making good use of alternative contact channels like WhatsApp.

"We continue to see companies overfocusing on the speed a complaint is resolved, which can lead to cases being shut down before all actions have been completed - leaving customers having to chase responses and updates. We're asking companies to only close complaints once every known action has been completed for the customer. We also want to see companies setting clearer and more specific timescales and expectations for customers across all their communications. This should reduce uncertainty and cut down on avoidable and unnecessary follow‑up contact and customer effort."

Click here for more information and to access the Q 1 to 4 Complaint and Debt assessments of water companies 2025-26