About us
The Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat) is a non-ministerial government department. We are the economic regulator for the water and sewerage sectors in England and Wales. We are responsible for making sure that the companies we regulate provide consumers with a good quality and efficient service at a fair price.
Our job is to make sure that your water company provides you with a good quality service at a fair price.
We do this by:
- keeping bills for consumers as low as possible
- monitoring and comparing the services the companies provide
- scrutinising the companies’ costs and investment
- encouraging competition where this benefits consumers
If a company falls short of what we or customers expect we take the action necessary to protect consumers’ interests, which may include legal steps such as enforcement action and fines.
As the economic regulator of the water industry in England and Wales we work closely with a wide range of other stakeholders. These include the water quality regulators (the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate) and the Consumer Council for Water.