Water Customer Service Codes - amendments 2012

In April 2012, the Water Amendment (Governance and Other Reforms) Act 2012 was passed which resulted in a number of amendments to the Water Industry Act 1994 and the Water Act 1989.

Some of these legislative amendments require changes to the following Customer Service Codes the Commission made for the Victorian water sector:

• Customer Service Code, Metropolitan Retail and Regional Water Businesses 2010 
• Rural Water Customer Service Code 2008  
• Trade Waste Customer Service Code 2012, Metropolitan Retail and Regional Water Businesses.

The key legislative amendments that affect our Codes are the transfer of the metropolitan water retailers from the Water Industry Act to being statutory water corporations under the amended Water Act and the additional powers granted to water businesses in relation to customer debt management under the amended Water Act, subject to oversight by the Commission. 

Customer debt management

In June 2012, as an intermediate measure, we included transitional provisions in the Urban, and Rural Customer Codes to preserve the current debt management powers of regional and rural water businesses, albeit with interest capped for the time being at 10 per cent (for non-metropolitan businesses).  The transitional provisions also ensure that the new debt recovery powers available to the metropolitan businesses will not apply until this code review process is complete.

On 12 December 2012, the Commission released the final decision and the final  urban and rural customer service codes.

Publications for this project are listed below.