Economic Regulation of Water Services – Information Disclosure
We will use information disclosure as a tool to regulate councils and water organisations that provide water supply and/or wastewater services.
An update on our draft decision package to introduce information disclosure requirements
We have seen confusion about our categorisation of 'basic' and 'additional' (shaded grey) disclosure requirements.
We confirm that our draft proposal is for all of the requirements in the Draft Determination to apply to all regulated suppliers from the date of the final decision in February next year.
We are considering whether it would be better to treat some or all of the grey-shaded ('additional') disclosure requirements differently in our final determination.
This could involve:
- removing the requirement(s) in our final determination. We could potentially introduce them later as sector capability improves.
- including the requirement(s) but delaying the start date, or
- only applying the requirement(s) to some regulated suppliers.
We have sought feedback from stakeholders on their views and evidence relating to these decisions through our submissions process. The submissions have been published and can be found below.
Information Disclosure
One of the key tools we will use for economic regulation for the water sector is information disclosure (or ID) – a form of economic regulation that promotes transparency by requiring regulated suppliers to publicly disclose certain information about their performance.
We take that information, analyse it, and publish it in a manner that makes it easier to compare between regulated suppliers, and look at trends over time.
By shining a light on what’s going well and identifying and monitoring areas for improvement, we can encourage your local water service provider to improve efficiency and quality and incentivise it to innovate and invest for the long-term benefit of consumers.
Earlier in 2025, we published our Information Disclosure Discussion Paper as a first step in engaging with water sector stakeholders to understand their views on how we could develop a new performance reporting regime for water service providers. We published the responses we received and a paper that summaries the key themes and issues raised.