Retail Market Opening Management Group & CEO
workshop – summary minutes
On 3 February 2016, Sarah Hendry, Cathryn Ross and Ben Jeffs of the retail market
opening management group (RMOMG) held a workshop with water company CEOs
to discuss the progress of the Open Water programme, share views, discuss any
concerns and answer any questions. The workshop was well-attended and, we
hope, a productive session for everyone present.
Sarah, Cathryn and Ben stated that significant progress had been made on the
programme, including MOSL transforming itself from a procurement team to a
functioning business, the development of a clear programme governance structure
and published an integrated programme plan. We have also consulted on a number
of issues including the water supply and sewerage licence, numerous codes,
customer protection and published the market and company readiness plan. While
the programme is on track for retail market opening in April 2017 the management
group noted several key challenges going forwards and responded, or took the
following actions:
Developer services: Management group agreed to consider whether removing
developer services from the initial scope of the market would de-risk market opening.
RMOMG acknowledged that it was important to consider this from the customer
perspective and agreed to consider the issue quickly.i RMOMG stated that as
developer services were already included in the programme’s scope there would
need to be a clear case for its removal.
Market operation – retailer wholesaler relationship: Management group agreed it
was important to consider how the market was actually going to operate after market
opening, in particular how retailers and wholesalers were going to work together to
ensure good customer services. Market participants agreed to have discussions with
retailer groups on what might be useful, for example putting Service Level
Agreements in place to ensure a certain level of responsiveness to addressing the
issues identified. Management group agreed that it was important to consider the
prioritisation of functionality through the customer lens (to create a seamless
customer experience) and MOSL agreed to lead this.
Market operation – continued development: RMOMG acknowledged that the
market was unlikely to be perfect on day one and would develop over time. There
should therefore be a way of logging and resolving issues after market opening,
including any on-going data issues. The management group agreed it was important
to consider what a successful market would look like and acknowledged that taking
into account industry views and setting external expectations as to market readiness
were key parts of this work.
Market readiness: Cathryn explained that the market readiness condition was to
protect trading parties that had worked hard to be ready for market opening, by
providing assurance that all trading parties will make the same efforts as they will be
judged against the same standards. Cathryn further explained that in any
consideration of enforcement action Ofwat is bound (through public law) to being
reasonable in the application of its powers.
Lessons learnt: The management group members agreed that it was important to
make best use of lessons learnt by all market participants and that all parties had a
role in considering how this could be done better collectively, for example companies
could share lessons on data cleaning.
Transparency: The management group members agreed to give further
consideration to publishing programme risks.
Logging and resolving issues: The management group agreed that prompt action
was required on the issues that had been raised as well as on feeding back to
market participants the outcome of such action. Where companies had continued
concerns they should raise them via the appropriate programme channels. As per
the Open Water governance structure, the main industry group is the Work plan
Review Group (WRG) and this is industry’s first port of call, along with their
respective portfolio managers. The WRG can report any issues into the programme
management group (PMG) and in turn to the management group. CEOs should also
feel able to raise any specific issues with members of the Management Group who
would feed those back to the PMG for action.
Sarah, Cathryn and Ben welcomed the constructive way that companies had raised
potential challenges in the meeting and agreed to arrange a further meeting in the
next quarter.
In the meantime, your feedback on the workshop would be useful – please do get in
touch (via tim.griffiths@ofwat.gsi.gov.uk) and let us know how you found it.
The PMG convened a sub-group on 9th February 2016 to discuss two proposals that
had been submitted to the programme by Thames Water following the MOSL derisking workshop with CEOs in December. A note of the meeting can be found on the
Open Water website.
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