{"id":278535,"date":"2025-07-20T23:30:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T23:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/278535\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T23:30:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T23:30:12","slug":"new-water-ombudsman-will-tackle-leaks-and-incorrect-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/278535\/","title":{"rendered":"New water ombudsman will tackle leaks and incorrect bills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He used an interview on the BBC on Sunday to pave the way for far-reaching reforms, describing the sector as &#8220;broken&#8221; and its regulator as &#8220;clearly failing&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Reed said voters could hold him accountable if there had not been improvements in water quality come the next election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But he stopped short of saying whether Ofwat might be axed altogether &#8211; something that could be recommended by the Water Commission in its Monday report.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former Undertones frontman, Feargal Sharkey, a leading campaigner for cleaner waterways, said he feared the report would not be radical enough to solve the problems facing the sector and would turn out to be a disappointing &#8220;flat pancake&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The latest announcement means the water industry will have a consumer watchdog that will serve as a single point of contact for consumers with complaints, bringing it in line with other utilities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The plan will also see an expanded role for the Consumer Council for Water (CCW), the public body that currently takes on complaints.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) was unable to put a timescale on the plans for a new ombudsman, but said it would have legal powers to protect customers who are in dispute with their water company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He used an interview on the BBC on Sunday to pave the way for far-reaching reforms, describing the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-278535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114888168136771679","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}