Ofwat has published an update on the roles, responsibilities and governance for different organisations after May 2015 to deliver the Open Water Water programme ahead of the market opening for competition in 2017.
The regulator announced back in February 2015, that Open Water Market Limited (OWML), the company originally set up to take the Open Water programme forward, would be wound down after May and that its work would be allocated between Market Operator Services Limited (MOSL) – a private company – and Ofwat.
To provide clarity to all stakeholders, Ofwat has now published:
• ‘Roles, responsibilities and governance of the Open Water programme and transition post May 2015’;
and
• ‘Open Water programme – roles of different organisations for individual pieces of work’
The four groups that will deliver the core Open Water programme after May 2015 are as follows.
- Government (including the UK Government, represented principally by Defra, and the Scottish Government).
- Economic regulators (including Ofwat as the economic regulator for water and wastewater services in England and Wales and the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, WICS, as the Scottish regulator).
- Market participants collectively, including new entrants, holders of existing retail licences and both incumbent wholesale and retail businesses.
- Market participants individually (as well as operating collectively to ensure delivery of the central market operator role and systems) will have market readiness work to carry out within their own organisations.
Other parties Ofwat expects to play a key role in the development of the new market arrangements include:
• customers and their representative groups such as the Consumer Council for Water (CCWater); and
• other regulators, including the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and Natural England,
Ofwat said all the programme parties are committed to implementing the changes to roles, responsibilities and governance in a sensible and managed way as quickly as possible, commenting:
“Critically we must ensure that the momentum of this work can continue to enable the market to open in April 2017. An important aspect of this is agreeing the overall budget for this work. We are currently working through the cost implications of this work and will provide further information as the transition dates are finalised.”
Click here to download Roles, responsibilities and governance of the Open Water programme and transition post May 2015
Click here to download Open Water programme – roles of different organisations for individual pieces of work
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