Economist – Charges and Developer Services

Requirements of the role

We have an opportunity for a Economist to join our Charges and Developer Services Team within Major Projects and Markets Directorate. The Charges and Developer Services team sets rules and guidance to companies for the way they charge for their services, promotes the new connections market and supports the fast-growing framework for new appointees.

This is an exciting opportunity to join us and play a key part in developing our regulation of new appointees, as part of our wider work on markets.

We are Ofwat, the Water Services Regulation Authority, a non-ministerial government department responsible for regulating the water sector in England and Wales.

You can find out more about why you should join Ofwat, our strategy, values and our framework for success in the attached Information for Candidates Pack.

Job description
The Role

The role will support two key areas of our work: new appointees and charges.

New appointees

New appointees (also known as NAVs) are new entrant water companies initially looking to serve small, distinct geographic areas. They have expanded very quickly in recent years: while they made up only around 2% of the new connections market in 2017, we now estimate their market share to exceed 30%. We forecast that the number of NAV customers will significantly increase in the coming years, to more than 500,000 by 2030, and more than one million by 2035.

You will play a crucial role in our work to adapt our regulation to reflect the increasing scale of the NAV market, aimed at delivering better outcomes for customers, society and the environment. You will develop policy on aspects of our economic regulation of new appointees while coordinating inputs from different parts of Ofwat, including colleagues working on financial resilience, licensing, markets and customers. You will also engage with new appointees and related stakeholders.

Charges

We set charging rules to govern how incumbents and NAVs set charges for the services they provide, to households, business customers and developers. We use our charging rules to promote charges that are stable, fair, transparent, predictable and innovative. We regulate how incumbents and NAVs provide services to developers (the developer services market), stepping back from regulation where the market is stronger, and protecting customers where market choice is limited. We are currently considering a wide range of charging policy issues, including:

improving environmental outcomes;
encouraging companies to trial innovations in charging, aiming to support affordability and sustainability;
reviewing the developer services market to gauge its effectiveness and how we might improve it; and
considering how new demands for significant amounts of potable and non-potable water should be funded.
You will play an important role in developing these and other policy issues, collaborating with other parts of Ofwat, including colleagues working on cost assessment, annual reporting, water resources, and business retail. You will also engage with developers, incumbents, new appointees and related stakeholders.

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