Our water and sewer pricing journey
Our customers are at the heart of our services. We use diverse and innovative engagement methods to educate and listen to our community. This ensures that our services align with our customer needs and preferences.
Working alongside our community, we gain insights and recommendations to give to an independent body who determine our pricing structure. The NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) set prices for customer water, sewerage, and stormwater services.
We are almost at the end of the current set pricing period (1 July 2022 - 30 June 2026). Our next pricing submission (1 July 2026 - 30 June 2031) is due in September 2025. This pricing structure will exclude stormwater drainage - learn more about stormwater drainage in our FAQs.
Together we can shape the future of our water and sewer services.
We recently asked the community about their water and sewer service priorities – now, your feedback is needed to guide the next steps. In these community engagement activities, you will have your voice heard on future water and sewer service improvements—to balance costs, reliability, and service quality.
How you've engaged with us so far
In preparation for our submission, we have already engaged in three phases of community consultation. We are currently in Phase four. Click on the dots below to learn more about our water and sewer community engagement journey.
Community engagement - phases 1 and 2
Here's what we learnt in phases 1 and 2
Your values
Our community engagement journey began with a discovery phase to understand what you value most about your wate and sewer services.
Understanding our customers' values helped us align our services with what matters most to you. With your feedback, we made informed decisions about service levels, investment and future planning. This ensures we deliver reliable and affordable services that reflect your values.
You told us what you want reported back to you
Your feedback on our reporting plays a crucial role in shaping what and how future performance reporting is published.
We asked you to tell us your preferred performance measures to publish, how often and in what format.
We now publicly report our performance to ensure transparency, accountability and continuous improvement. By sharing key metric such as water interruptions, response times, and water quality complaint - you can see how we are meeting expectations, where we can change and how we are improving.
What's most important to our customers
What you told us
Our customers told us what was most important to them
- Responding to urgent and non-urgent issues reported by our customers
- Number of properties affect by unplanned water interruptions
- Average duration of unplanned interruptions to water supply
- Water quality complaints
- Number of water pressure complaints
- Number of water main breaks
- Water sampling results
- Water extracted from our storages
- Water produced for the Central Coast community
- Number of days that beaches/lagoons aren't swimmable (due to breaks or discharges)
- Number of Environmental Protection Licence (EPL) non-compliances
- Number of sewer overflows (wet and dry weather)
- Volume of sewage overflows
- Number of sewage overflows reported to the regulator
- Number of sewer main breaks and chokes
Community engagement - phase 3
During phase 3 we:
- re-tested and prioritised your water and sewer values
- clarified how you want us to engage with you
- asked for your feedback on future billing structures
- asked for your feedback on response times and performance targets.
We are reviewing our service levels
Water and Sewer Service Levels are the standards we work towards in maintaining your services. In 2025, we are preparing an engagement program to clarify preferences on these standards. You can find Service Levels in our Water and Sewer Customer Charter.
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What you told us
We re-tested what you value most about the services we provide. The values from phases 1 and 2 remained important to our customers:
- Good Quality Water
- Quality Treatment (sewage)
- Reliable Service
- Affordability
- Effective Planning
- Environmental Focus
- Transparency and Education
You told us you prefer a smooth billing structure, where charges are consistent each financial year, increasing only by Consumer Price Index (CPI), if there is to be only minor changes.
For more significant changes to prices, you needed us to ask you again what your preference is.
