This page provides links to each water company’s vulnerability strategy for meeting the needs of customers that need extra help.
Some people do not have a reasonable opportunity to access and receive an inclusive service which may have a detrimental impact on their health, wellbeing or finances. This may be due to personal characteristics, their overall life situation or due to broader market and economic factors.
We refer to these customers as ‘customers who need extra help’, or ‘customers in vulnerable circumstances’. They may need extra support accessing or paying for services (or both) to make sure they get the same standard of service as everyone else.
Each water company has a vulnerability strategy for meeting the needs of customers that need extra help.
Below we provide:
- Links to each water company’s final vulnerability strategy
- How water companies will be held to account
- How water companies developed their strategies
Page updated: 5 November 2025
Water companies’ final vulnerability strategies
Click the links below to view each company’s final vulnerability strategy.
| Water and wastewater companies | Water only companies | New appointees |
| Anglian Water | Affinity Water | Advanced Water Infrastructure Networks – We will be asking companies to ensure their vulnerability strategies are available on their websites |
| Dŵr Cymru | Portsmouth Water | Albion Eco |
| Hafren Dyfrdwy | South East Water | Albion Water – We will be asking companies to ensure their vulnerability strategies are available on their websites. |
| Northumbrian Water | South Staffs & Cambridge Water | County Water – We will be asking companies to ensure their vulnerability strategies are available on their websites. |
| Severn Trent | SES Water | ESP Water |
| South West Water | Icosa Water | |
| Southern Water | Independent Water Networks- We will be asking companies to ensure their vulnerability strategies are available on their websites. | |
| Thames Water | Leep Water | |
| United Utilities | Matrix Water | |
| Wessex Water | MUA Water- We will be asking companies to ensure their vulnerability strategies are available on their websites. | |
| Yorkshire Water | Severn Trent Services (trading as Severn Trent Connect) | |
| Veolia Water Projects |
Holding water companies to account
A key benefit of companies developing publicly available strategies is that it allows stakeholders, including Ofwat, CCW, customers and customer groups, to hold them to account against their commitments and their performance. Even the strongest strategies are only as good as their implementation, and we want to see all companies make good on their commitments.
We have also published links to water companies’ final vulnerability strategies to help all companies deliver better extra help services.
We will continue to monitor water companies’ performance against their strategies, including through customer research, reviewing relevant datasets and stakeholder engagement. Where companies are not meeting their commitments, we will take appropriate action. This could range from securing plans to address shortcomings and deliver the minimum expectations to enforcement of the new customer-focused licence condition (Licence Condition G) if we consider there has been a breach.
Developing water companies’ vulnerability strategies
In December 2023, we published our final ‘Service For All’ vulnerability guidance. This guidance consists of objectives and minimum expectations of the services that water companies deliver to customers who require extra help and the way they are delivered.
One of our objectives was for all water companies to have strategies in place to support the extra help needs of their customers. We said that companies should publish their vulnerability strategies in draft form by the end of June 2024 and publish their final strategies by the end of June 2025.
In November 2024 we published our assessment of water companies’ draft vulnerability strategies and associated submissions. This was to allow companies to improve their plans, in partnership with customer organisations and the third sector.
We consulted on and finalised guidance to water companies on standards for their priority services registers in early 2025. A priority services register is a water company’s record of customers that need extra help – and the help they need to receive.
In October 2025 we confirmed that the sector improving the reach of their Priority Services Registers (PSR) from 2% to 12.8% of their customers during 2020-25.