Investigation into whether Thames Water is contravening the Competition Act 1998
| Date | 09 July 2019 |
On 21 June 2019, we opened an investigation into allegations that Thames Water Utilities Limited was contravening the prohibition in Chapter II of the Competition Act 1998 (“CA98”) by abusing a dominant position. The allegations related to:
- the approach that Thames Water took when installing digital smart meters and the impact that this had on providers of data logging services and their business customers.
- the accuracy of the data about customers that Thames Water made available to retailers at the time of the opening of the business retail market.
- the fairness of certain contractual credit terms that Thames Water was applying to retailers.
As part of our analysis we kept under review which of our regulatory tools were most appropriate to each of the issues being considered.
In June 2020 we concluded that the CA98 was no longer the most appropriate tool to use in relation to the allegation about contractual credit terms and that the issue could be more effectively considered using our powers under sections 66DA and 117F of the Water Industry Act 1991 in relation to compliance with the Wholesale Retail Code. We therefore split this aspect of the complaint out into a separate investigation.
In November 2020 we decided that the CA98 was no longer the most appropriate tool for us to consider and address the concerns identified relating to the data accuracy issue. We considered that the issue could be more completely and effectively addressed using our powers under sections 18-22A, 66DA and 117F of the Water Industry Act, relating to compliance with Thames Water’s Licence and the Wholesale Retail Code. We therefore split this out into a separate investigation.
CA98 CommitmentsWe continued to progress the remaining strand of our investigation, concerning Thames Water’s approach to installing digital meters, under the CA98.
We held a number of meetings with Thames Water to discuss our outstanding competition concerns. Following these discussions, Thames Water decided to offer us formal commitments under the CA98, for the purposes of addressing our competition concerns in this investigation.
Specifically, the commitments sought to address our concerns that, as a result of the approach Thames Water chose for rolling out its smart metering programme:
- retailers and third-party service providers were unable to directly access water usage data from the smart meters; and
- Thames Water had not, as an alternative to that direct access...
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