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.
Below we set out our work on vulnerability and wider work to protect household customers in England and Wales.
Last updated: 13 February 2026
Supporting customers that need extra help accessing services
Water companies are required to maintain a register of customers that need special assistance to access services – particularly in emergencies.
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.
Each water company has a vulnerability strategy for meeting the needs of customers that need extra help.
Supporting customers with cost of living pressures
We know many people are struggling with the cost of living. Our cost of living research looks at several key areas relating to affordability.
In ‘Summary of water companies’ published plans for affordability for 2025-30′ we’ve summarised water companies’ plans for financial support for their customers over the next five years, including doubling the number of customers receiving support. This support will be funded mostly by other customers, but some companies will also use shareholder money or share financial rewards they receive by meeting targets over the next five years. Many companies are also planning or running charging trials to keep bills affordable and improve water security for their customers over the long term.
We have collected data to gain an up-to-date understanding of the number of customers in debt and the amounts owed by households. Our analysis of household customer debt report highlights our findings.
Previously in 2023 we highlighted water companies’ efforts to ease cost of living pressures and areas for further action
Transforming customer care
In February 2024 we introduced a dedicated condition in the licence of each water company in England and Wales about how they treat their customers, including customers in vulnerable circumstances (our ‘Customer-focused licence condition‘). The condition helps increase companies’ customer focus and encourage the very best service for customers, while ensuring that we have the right mix of tools to effect change when service falls short.
- In January 2026 we announced an investigation into whether South East Water has complied with its obligation to provide high standards of customer service and support for its customers. This followed repeated outages in Kent and Sussex since November 2025 that caused widespread disruption for households and businesses. This is the first investigation we have launched on our customer-focused licence condition.
- In February 2026 we published our ‘Sewer flooding customer care review’, where we looked at how water and wastewater companies in England and Wales supported customers affected by sewer flooding in 2024-25. Flooding from sewage is hugely distressing for customers that experience it. It is among the worst service failures they can experience. In our customer review we set out 10 outcomes we intend water and wastewater companies to achieve to improve customers experiences during sewer flooding incidents. These intended outcomes will inform our development of formal guidance to companies which will set out the customer care they must deliver in future
Our wider work to protect customers
In our strategy, ‘Time to Act, together’, we said we want to see water companies transform their ability to serve customers and respond to the full diversity of customer needs, particularly those in vulnerable circumstances.
Water services are inherently local. We want to see companies build on the research they do for their business plans to deepen their understanding of and relationships with their local communities and to improve their ability to meet the needs of the communities they serve.
We expect companies to work with local partners to address strategic challenges. Strong customer and community participation is key to behaviour change needed to use water wisely and reduce the risks of pollution from sewer blockages.
There are a range of actions we take to improve outcomes for customers and communities.
- Listen and understand people’s needs and priorities.
- Work jointly with consumer bodies and regulators in other sectors to provide a more holistic support framework for customers in vulnerable circumstances. For example, in March 2024, alongside the FCA, Ofcom and Ofgem, we published a joint letter setting out the consumer outcomes that we expect to see firms delivering, in response to identified consumer harms on debt collection
- Encourage companies to deliver better service experiences to customers. For example, our Paying fair guidelines set out our expectations of the payment, help and debt services companies deliver to customers. We assessed how water companies were committing to our Paying fair guidelines in 2023 – and assessed how water companies were meeting our Paying fair guidelines in 2024.
- Improve the customer complaints handling process so that customers are helped more effectively and quickly.
- Develop new high-level licence obligations to provide binding requirements on how companies treat their customers and the most vulnerable in society.
- Encourage companies to take action to ease cost of living pressures on household customers.
- Improve the ability of customers and stakeholders to shape and challenge the companies’ future business plans.
Further information
We provide information to household and non-household consumers and the water and sewerage services we regulate. This includes an overview of consumers’ statutory rights. Information about specific services is available from water companies.
We encourage companies to deliver better services to customers using other tools – including our customer measure of experience.
‘UKRN Understanding affordability pressures in essential services provides an overview of approaches to defining and measuring affordability across the regulated sectors providing the essential services of energy, water and communications