The Board of Open Water Market Ltd has said that the water companies’ own information about their business customers and the services they receive will be used to develop the central register for the upcoming retail competitive market in 2017.

The Board has now decided that the ‘top down’ approach of using Ordnance Survey and Valuation Office data is no longer suitable and instead to focus the scope of the project on identifying measures that companies could use to ensure that their own information about customers and the services provided is as accurate as possible.

It is also no longer intended that the Market Operator will have a role in facilitating the creation of a data proxy for non-household premises and addresses. Instead, it will be for each company to determine and provide the data.

In July 2013 the High Level Group (HLG) endorsed the Open Water Programme’s recommendation that a central register of the contestable market should be developed to facilitate the future retail market which would be hosted by the market’s market operator and be made available to all market participants.

At the time Open Water said the register would play a key role in ensuring all market participants had a common understanding of what makes up the contestable market and in enabling an efficient and transparent way for customers to exercise their right to switch retailer.

The HLG agreed that to inform the development of the central register, the Open Water Programme would work with the industry to develop and pilot a prototype register. The Pilot’s central register was originally intended to include:

• Address details of all eligible premises
• Detail of the geographical and service scope of retailers’ licences
• A record for each of the water and wastewater service points associated with  each eligible premise
• Details of which wholesaler is serving each service point
• Details of which retailer is serving each service point, including the periods from which they have served to and from (where appropriate) the physical attribution data for the meter associated with each service point, including the meter point address where this is different from the eligible premises address

In a statement, the OWM Ltd Board said the project had been seeking to determine the scope for using Ordnance Survey and Valuation Office Agency datasets as a proxy for identifying non-household premises in England and Wales, which could then be used to supplement existing billing information as the basis for establishing the information about eligible premises that should be used in the market.

The information about customers and services that companies provide will now be used to populate the central registration system.

 The OWM Ltd Board said that work that had already been completed in the pilot project would be useful, and that it now plans to publish a report setting out the findings (as well as any lessons learned) shortly, commenting:

“Information quality will therefore be an important factor in ensuring that the retail market provides a seamless experience for customers both north and south of the border. Open Water will continue to work with companies as they consider their own customer information and how this might be improved further.”