Special Assistance

We recently asked companies to provide information on their services to elderly and disabled customers and, in particular, how these services had changed since the last review undertaken by WaterVoice in 2005.

We have now completed our review of these services and aim to publish the report on our website shortly. The report, while acknowledging that many companies have improved their services in the last two years, still identifies a number of areas in which we would like to see improvements.

We would specifically like to see companies develop their services in the following areas:

- The facility to apply for services on-line, or have the option to download application forms; this will help to improve accessibility to the services for consumers.

- Services to be referred to as Special Assistance if a company specific brand name is not already in use; we believe that Special Assistance is a positive name for the scheme and could help to encourage more consumers to apply.

- Explore further joint working initiatives with other agencies, such as Primary Care Trusts; these organisations are best placed to identify consumers who might benefit from some of the services on offer.

- Better tracking of the effectiveness of the different ways the scheme is promoted; this should allow companies to focus their resources on the methods that are most productive.

- Companies should ensure that they have staff trained to deal with deaf consumers.

The review also contains a number of examples of good practice that we would like to see all companies adopt where possible.

While we acknowledge that there are a number of factors that contribute to this difference – such as double (or greater) counting and the differences in the services available – we believe that it is a clear indication that there are a significant number of consumers who would welcome the help that the Special Assistance schemes offer who are not currently on water companies registers. We would like companies to explain to us what action they are taking to bring the numbers on their register up to a level comparable with those in the energy sector.