Water and sewerage services have traditionally been undertaken by the statutory water company for the area in which the property is situated.
Under the New Appointment and Variation (NAV) legislation, if the relevant criteria are met, an application can be made to Ofwat for an alternative company to replace another as appointee to provide water or sewerage services or both.
The application can be either to appoint a new company to provide the services or for an existing company to vary the area where it already provides services to include the site. The application must be for a site which has no existing mains water or sewerage connection, for large users of water or have the consent of the statutory water company.
A new appointee has the same duties and responsibilities as the statutory water company. When considering applications, Ofwat's policy is to ensure that customers should not be worse off. This means that the quality of and the charges for water and sewerage services must be at least comparable to that supplied by the statutory water company for that area.
We are familiar with applications being made for businesses using large volumes of water. However, although still rare, we are increasingly seeing applications being made for new build housing estates and that trend seems likely to continue.
