Welcome to our Business Plan Website.

Introduction

South Staffs Water is committed to providing customers with high levels of service at the lowest possible price, as well as a clean, reliable water source of the highest quality. In order for us to continue operating our business in this way, every five years we have to submit our business plans to our Regulator Ofwat. On 11 August 2008 we submitted our Draft Business Plan, covering the period from 2010 to 2015, and on April 7th 2009 we submitted our revised Final Business Plan. Our Business Plans are at the heart of the 2009 Price Review and provide an assessment of many of the detailed issues we aim to address during the five-year review period. Ofwat will analyse our Business Plan and use it to determine our price limits, which we then translate into customer charges, as well as setting our efficiency targets and outputs for the review period.

This website provides an overview to our Final Business Plan and the policies contained within it. The material contained within it is focussed on 'Part A – Company Strategy', which is a high level overview document at the heart of our Business Plan. We will also include brief summaries of the more detailed documents in Parts B and C of our Final Business Plan. We have not published the whole of these documents because these are often very technical reports, which in some cases contain confidential information.

Over the next 5 years (2010/15), the average household bills for South Staffs Water customers will rise in total by 15.5%, excluding inflation, a total increase of £18 per household, which is £3.60 per year. Our current average household bill of £116 is therefore expected to be £134 in 2014/15. Capital investment per property will increase by 17% to £51 per year.

The price limits in this FBP are in total 16.8% over five years and the yearly movement is as follows:

	2010/11	2011/12	2012/13	2013/14	2014/15
Price Limit (%)	8.1	4.4	4.2	0.1	0.0
Average H'hold Bill (£)	125	130	135	135	134

We have constructed our Business Plan website to encourage our customers and stakeholders to express their views on our future proposals – both positive and negative. If you do wish to comment on our Final Business Plan and the proposals within it, please contact us.