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On 8 July 2024, Market Operator Services Limited (MOSL) published their 2023/24 Annual Market Performance Report, which presents market performances and assurances over the last financial year.
MOSL’s Director of Market Development, Adam Richardson, introduced the report by stating:
“This year’s AMPR is the sixth report reviewing wholesaler and retailer performance - from data quality to Legacy Long Unread Meters (LLUMs).
I am pleased that a number of parties have already taken positive action as a result of the enhanced focus MOSL has placed on settlement variations and estimation accuracy through our new settlement parity dashboard, available on My MOSL.
As we move into 2024/25, it’s positive to see work on the Market Performance Framework (MPF) Reform progressing at pace, with strong trading party collaboration. I look forward to our continued work with the market, trading parties, as well as the new Performance Assurance Committee (PAC) as we continue to drive market performance for the benefit of business customers.”
A case study was included in this year’s report, focused on the positive measures Castle Water have taken regarding metering processes. Castle Water are the only water retailer in the UK to employ their own metering field team who are able to take the time to access complex meters, provide accurate readings, investigate faults and improve customer satisfaction.
Castle Water’s Director of Wholesale and Markets, Ray Porter, said:
“The expiry of a legacy meter reading contract with a wholesaler in 2022 allowed Castle Water to tender for a new national meter reading service and thereby begin to take control of its meter reading, where it had previously been constrained.”
Castle Water improved their metering performance within this period by:
- “Redesigning meter scheduling rules and processes, read validations, and skip management processes, to maximise outcomes and improve accuracy.
- Developing new reports giving insights into the meter reading health of individual meters
- Investing in an in-house solution to manage meter read and skip information.
- Automating bilateral requests to wholesalers based on validated skip data.
- Developing a system to provide the business with access to metering data upon which decisions can be taken and customer queries answered.
- Making a substantial investment in Automatic Meter Reading.
- Implementing a process for the timely identification and resolution of issues in reading meters otherwise at risk of being ‘unread failures’.
- Aligning to the RWG ‘standard skip codes’.
- Sharing skip data with wholesalers, aiding maintenance of the meter network.
- Improving engagement with our customers to gain access to read meters.
- Continuing to fund a successful project which has reduced the number of long unread meters by 60% and materially changed the population of meters which remain long unread, whereby today less than 40% of those meters are occupied with an impacted customer.”
Ray Porter continues: “As a result, Castle Water ended 2023/24 as the top performing large retailer for Market Performance Standards despite challenges presented by the location of its meters and not having wholesaler-provided meter reading services in its three largest wholesaler areas.
The catalyst for improvement was Castle Water as the retailer taking control of its meter reads, which in part explains our opposition to the proposal for wholesalers to be responsible for submitting meter reads to CMOS where a smart meter is installed.”
Castle Water CEO, John Reynolds, recently commented on the positive effects of this investment into metering in his latest article discussing the mis-selling of business water within the UK.
The full Annual Market Performance report can be found here.
