Water
Water
Find the SPIDs.Then the savings.
Most estates have never had their water looked at properly, and it is usually the utility with the largest gap between what is billed and what is used.
How the market works
The non-household water market separates the wholesaler from the retailer. The wholesaler owns the pipes, treats the water and sets the wholesale charges. The retailer bills you, reads the meter and handles your account. You can change the retailer. You cannot change the wholesaler.
Wholesale charges are set by the regional wholesaler and regulated by Ofwat. They pass straight through your bill unchanged whichever retailer you use. Only the retail element is competitive, and it is a thin slice of the total.
That matters because it sets a realistic expectation. Changing retailer on its own moves a small part of the bill. The larger opportunities are almost always in the data: meters read incorrectly or not at all, a charge for surface water drainage on a site that does not drain to the public sewer, wastewater volumes assumed rather than measured, vacant premises still being billed, and leaks running unnoticed on a supply nobody monitors.
Each supply point has its own identifier, a SPID, in the same way an electricity meter has an MPAN. Multi-site estates routinely hold SPIDs nobody has reconciled against the sites they still occupy.
Wholesale and retail
Cannot be changed
The wholesaler
- Owns the pipes and treats the water.
- Sets the wholesale charges, regulated by Ofwat.
- Charges pass straight through the bill unchanged.
Competitive
The retailer
- Bills you, reads the meter and handles the account.
- Holds the only element you can put out to market.
- A thin slice of the total bill.
From the pipe to your bill
Wholesaler
Regional, regulated by Ofwat.
Retailer
The part you can change.
Supply point
Identified by a SPID.
Your bill
Wholesale plus retail, on the reads held.
What we do
Retailer procurement
We run the retail market at renewal and rank offers on the full billed position rather than the retail margin alone. We are paid on the same basis as electricity and gas, by an agreed margin or a fixed management fee.
Portfolio reconciliation
We build the SPID list from market data and check it against the sites you actually occupy. Closed sites, duplicated supply points and premises billed to the wrong party all surface at this stage.
Charge validation
We check the tariff, the meter reads, the wastewater return percentage and the drainage charges against the site as it is. Where a charge does not reflect the site, we raise it with the retailer in writing and pursue the correction.
Consumption and leak detection
Sustained overnight flow on a site that closes is a leak until proven otherwise. We review consumption patterns and flag supplies that are running when the building is not.
Trade effluent and special cases
Where a site discharges anything other than ordinary sewage, the consent and the charging basis need checking in their own right. We work through it with the wholesaler rather than assuming the standard basis applies.
Who can switch
Eligibility is set nation by nation, so the same group can have sites inside the market and sites outside it.
England
The non-household market opened in April 2017. Business, charity and public sector premises are eligible with no consumption threshold.
Wales
Premises supplied by a wholesaler based wholly or mainly in Wales can only switch where they use more than 50 megalitres a year, and the competitive market covers water retail services only, not sewerage.
Scotland
The non-household market has been open since 2008 and operates under separate arrangements.
Verified against Ofwat, August 2026.
Where we start
We start with the supply points, not with a quotation. Until the SPID list matches the sites you occupy, a price comparison is being run on the wrong estate.
Once it does, the renewal and the corrections can run together.
How to check this
Each claim on this page is answered by something you can read for yourself. Nothing below states a figure; it names the document or register the claim is held against.
Point 01
We hold a Level 1 Letter of Authority only
The authority wording sets out what we may do with your data and states that we cannot sign a contract on your behalf. Read it before you sign it.
Point 02
How we are paid is agreed in writing before you sign
Our margin or management fee is stated in the terms that accompany a recommendation, and nothing is added afterwards.
Point 03
Every figure we quote carries a dated source document
Records state the figure, what it is measured against, the document it is taken from and the date on that document. Records still held anonymous are labelled as such.
Point 04
We separate regulated charges from the part a supplier can hold
Network and policy charges are set outside the supplier and reset each April for every supplier alike. We do not describe them as fixed unless we hold written confirmation for that product.
Point 05
Validation is carried out against the invoice and the contract
Each query names the invoice, the line it sits on and the contract term it is checked against, so a supplier can answer it directly.