South West Water rated poor over complaints

South West Water's performance on complaints has been described as "really disappointing" by the watchdog the Consumer Council for Water

South West Water (SWW) has been rated poor by the water industry watchdog, over the number of household complaints and the company's handling of them.

"It's really disappointing," said Catherine Jones from the Consumer Council for Water (CCW), which represents the views of water customers in England and Wales and carried out the research.

It comes after the utility company announced average customer bills for this year would go up by 28%.

SWW said it is "doing everything it can to keep bills affordable" adding that contact centre staff have received additional training.

'Poor performer'

The CCW report - which reviewed household customer complaint handling by all water companies from April 2024 to March 2025 - highlights that SWW received fewer complaints from its household customers than in the previous year.

However, as other companies saw a greater decline in complaints, SWW was moved into the "poor performer" band.

The watchdog said that SWW had seen more "stage 2 escalations" and generated more complaints to the CCW in 2024/25 than in the previous year.

SWW was only one of three companies that provide water water and sewerage services that were rated as poor for their overall complaint performance for 2024/25. The others were Yorkshire Water and Thames Water.

The CCW research shows that SWW received fewer water and wastewater complaints in 2024/25 than the year before but had dealt with more issues related to billing.

The analysis by the CCW shows that SWW saw 72.696 complaints per 10,000 connections during that period.

"SWW needs to look at how they handle complaints but also at the root cause of the complaints and how to stop them happening in the first place", said Ms Jones, head of company engagement at CCW.

"We know there has been this massive bill increase across England and Wales and the company needs to be explaining what people's money is going on and why the bills are increasing,", she added.

"Better communication could stop a lot of the complaints happening in the first place."

'Nothing has improved'

Customer Roger Haworth, from Widecombe in the Moor, said: "I'm absolutely outraged my bill has increased given the performance of the company."

Mr Haworth called SWW to complain after his bill went up from £26 a month, to £38 a month earlier this year, although he did not continue the formal complaint process further.

"Nothing has improved, bills have gone up and they are still polluting our environment, it's absolutely unacceptable," the 79-year-old added.

Failures at the company over sewage spills have led to a £24m enforcement package after an investigation by the water industry regulator Ofwat.

In January, the company announced plans to almost double its investment in the environment to £2.5bn between 2025 and 2030.

In a statement SWW said: "Our customers are at the heart of everything we do and when things go wrong, we work hard to put them right as quickly as possible. We recognise that we have more to do, and we are already taking action to try and provide a resolution the first time a customer contacts us.

"Our contact centre staff have received additional training and are committed to improving the service they provide. In response to customer feedback, we have also made our bills easier to understand and have a new dedicated section on our website providing answers to the questions we get asked about the most."

It added it had a new £200m support package for customers and that bills were "funding a third of our record-breaking investment to improve water quality, protect the environment and boost resilience".