The utility said that some customers in financial difficulty could fail to receive the support and services they need if the Government failed to act to help make identification easier.
The request follows the Government's publication of the Water White Paper in December last year. Following the Paper, Defra has now consulted on draft guidance for company social tariffs. The guidance allows water companies to design their own social tariff schemes, and the discretion to implement them.
In Yorkshire Water’s view the Government should also provide water companies with more information to help them to identify such customers in the first place so that early support can be provided. As it stands, the company said there is a risk that vulnerable customers are not always identified and are therefore unable to benefit from the services and help which are available to them.
Richard Flint, Chief Executive of Yorkshire Water, commented:
"We have lots of services and initiatives in place already to help customers in difficulty but one of the major challenges we have is identifying them in the first place.
"Government in its many forms holds the data we need to help us do this. We're simply saying that we feel more needs to be done to look at how such information could be shared with us so that organisations like ourselves can be certain that we're doing everything we can to help and support those customers who are in genuine need."
The company was recently cited by the Government as an example of best practice within the water industry for its Community Trust, a registered charity which provides financial assistance to those customers who are finding it difficult to pay their bills.
Labour calls bill affordability a postcode lottery
On a tour of the company's Esholt waste water treatment works near Bradford yesterday, Gavin Shuker MP, Shadow Minister for Water and Waste, said:
"Yorkshire Water is leading the way when it comes to providing assistance to struggling households and their work with their Community Trust is to be commended.
"But government action on affordability is required as well. We think it’s unfair to extend a situation where a postcode lottery dictates whether you are able to afford your bill. Our water affordability plan shows that we are doing the deep thinking that this Tory-led government is dodging."
Gavin Shuker was visiting Esholt to see how Yorkshire Water is harnessing energy from waste to create what will be the UK's first energy self-sufficient large treatment facility.