The deadline is approaching for responses to South Staffs Water's consultation on the overall assurance framework it is proposing to put in place to meet Ofwat's data assurance requirements.
Ofwat’s ‘Company Monitoring Framework’ set out in June 2015 places the onus on companies to develop appropriate assurance processes and to engage with their stakeholders on data assurance.
South Staffs Water, which also owns CambridgeWater, is seeking stakeholder comments on its proposals for its assurance framework on behalf of both companies to be submitted by 8th January 2016.
South Staffs said it will then review the feedback received and publish final versions of its assurance framework and stakeholder engagement, and also its future action plan, in the new year.
South Staffs is among 15 out of the 18 water companies in the ‘targeted’ category, meaning it needs to ensure that it provides additional assurance on identified areas where it could improve (the targeted areas), and have action plans in place for how it will address these.
The consultation document sets out the overall framework which will be used to guide its assurance decisions and sets out risk based criteria along with a scoring system to indicate the appropriate level of assurance for a particular data set.
Introducing the consultation, South Staffs said it had taken particular note of the ‘Data Assurance Guidance for Electricity and Gas Network Companies’, produced by Ofgem in December 2014 in developing its proposed framework.
Following on from the consultation the water company will then issue final assurance plans and its final framework, by 31st March 2016. In July 2016 South Staffs will publish its annual performance report and the provision of year end data to various stakeholders.
After the 2015/16 year end publications, the company will then repeat the engagement process with stakeholders and repeat the strengths and weaknesses assessment to again identify any weaknesses or areas to target.
By 30th November 2016 Ofwat will look at how companies have applied their assurance frameworks and judge whether a category promotion or demotion is appropriate.
Click here to access South Staffs Water assurance framework and stakeholder engagement documents
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