We consider engagement with our customers crucial in achieving a fair outcome to the price-setting process. Throughout PR14 we were transparent with our customers and stakeholders.

Some of the formal research we conducted during PR14 process looked at Customer Service Priorities, Willingness to Pay and the Acceptability of our business plan.

The Customer Research Task Group actively engaged with us and our consultants by providing constructive feedback to ensure questions and information contained in the research allowed customers to share their views on aspects of water services and prices.

Examples of these studies from PR14 are highlighted below.

We are about to go through our PR19 customer engagement programme and will share the results as we go.

Willingness to Pay

In January 2013 we engaged with ICS Consultancy to commence Willingness to Pay research. Essentially Willingness to Pay is the measure of how much customers are willing to pay for improvements in services and their willingness to accept a deterioration in other services for the five year period 2015 - 2020.

We have now completed the Willingness to Pay study, and the results are given below. The study examined customer attitudes towards the following:

• Bill increase/decrease to fund service level increase/decrease
• The taste and smell of tap water
• The number of interruptions to supply due to burst pipes
• The frequency of restrictions on water use during periods of drought
• The pressure of tap water
• The hardness of tap water
• Noise, disruption and inconvenience from water company repairs
• Response time to service failures
• Ease of contact with South Staffs Water
• Treatment of customer complaints
• The appearance of tap water
• Flooding from burst mains
• The provision of information on water efficiency
• The level of leakage
• Sharing your water supply pipe with your neighbour
• Low river water levels due to South Staffs taking water from the environment
• Minor pollution incidents in rivers due to equipment failures

Acceptability

The company also engaged ICS / EFTEC to carry out research on the acceptability of the business plan proposals. The results are below.

Business Plan proposals

Following the publication of our draft business plan, the plans also went out for consultation to stakeholders and members of the public, resulting in nearly 1,000 responses. A summary of the responses is available below.