Issue
Sydney Water is Australia’s largest water utility, providing safe, high-quality drinking water to nearly 5.3 million people in and around Greater Sydney every day. Sydney Water also provide wastewater, stormwater, and recycled water services to many homes and businesses.
In 2022, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) introduced a new regulatory framework for water businesses in New South Wales (NSW). This framework requires demonstration of pricing submissions being in the long-term interests of customers, evidenced by customer preferences and willingness to pay for water services.
Our Water, Our Voice was a six-phase program conducted between 2022–24. It provided Sydney Water with an understanding of customer preferences to guide regulatory and government submissions and informed its Long Term Capital and Operational Plan (LTCOP) and company strategy.
Approach
Across the program, we engaged with more than 13,500 Sydney Water customers using a variety of community engagement methodologies from large 100-person community forums and workshops, 4-day 60-person longitudinal panels, to large surveys with advanced choice modelling embedded.
We identified customer priorities and established performance metrics to guide future evaluation. We also explored customers’ willingness to pay for service improvements, and their reactions to the potential impact of price rises.
An important part of this work was ensuring that customers had sufficient information to robustly debate topics and provide informed feedback. This was relevant because water infrastructure is typically a low involvement topic, especially for younger audiences, migrant communities, the financially vulnerable, and those renting their homes (who typically aren’t responsible for their water bills).
Customers were informed about the factors that were driving the need for a bill increase. We then used a choice model to assess customers’ willingness to pay more for additional service improvements, beyond a higher forecasted base-level bill. We also explored, in greater detail, what is important to customers when investing in areas such as waterway health, cool green spaces and water resilience and what Sydney Water needs to consider when prioritising investment in these areas.
Results
Through our work with customers from across Sydney, Sydney Water were able to assess a range of potential investment strategies, including customers’ preferred performance, risk and cost profiles, along with the trade-offs they make when selecting these. To inform their strategic plan, Sydney Water were also able to explore customer preferences for future tariff structures and performance measures.
Engaging with a representative cross-section of customers as part of this program, including those who would be most vulnerable in the case of drought and rising water prices, has ensured that Sydney Water is able to adopt a customer-centric approach to managing future water supply and water security issues.
.svg)
Back
