Customer Charter and Service Standards

Our vision is that 'customers always value the quality of our drinking water and the safe return of our wastewater to the environment'.

bathroom taps

We will help you by:

Being friendly, helpful and courteous.
Treating all our customers fairly and equally.
Displaying our contact details as clearly and prominently as possible on our documentation and website.
Taking good care of your data and processing it in a lawful, fair and transparent manner.
Sending you an accurate bill every three months.
Offering you a range of different ways to pay your bill.
Dealing with your query as quickly as possible and by keeping you abreast of progress.
Using your feedback to improve our service.
Informing you as quickly as possible if there is an interruption, or we anticipate an interruption, to your water or wastewater service.
Meeting or exceeding our Standards of Service.

Help us to help you by:

Being courteous and respectful to our staff.
Having your Customer Number, which can be found at the top right of your bill, to hand when you contact us.
Keeping a record of who you speak to and when.
Telling us when something changes, if you are changing your name or moving house for example.
Contacting us as soon as possible if you have a problem (including any concerns about paying your bill) so that we can try to resolve it as quickly as possible for you.
Following us on our social media channels to learn more about what we do and to receive updates on incidents and planned maintenance.
Letting us know how we are doing. Your compliments, complaints or feedback can help us to improve our service. You can contact us by telephone on 01481 229500, by emailing customer.service@water.gg or by registering your interest in taking part in surveys and focus groups.

A typical Guernsey Water meter

Contact and Appointments

We will aim to answer your telephone call within six rings.
We will endeavour to provide an initial response to all queries and complaints within five working days.
We will aim to give you 24 hours' notice if we need to change the time of an appointment.
We will always try to arrive at an appointment on time or within 30 minutes of the stated time if we have made a slightly more flexible arrangement with you.

Water Supply

We will aim to give you 24 hours' notice in writing if we plan to turn off your water in order to carry out scheduled maintenance.
If we need to turn your supply off in an emergency we will endeavour to advise you verbally beforehand or have someone on site who can assist you.
When requested, we will always provide drinking water for any customers that are left without tap water as the result of a main's burst and will aim to restore supply to our customers within 12 hours.
We will aim to fix a leak from our water main, which is not affecting supply to customers, within 10 days.
Water meters will be installed free of charge. We will endeavour to complete the work within three weeks of request unless the location is problematic or dangerous, in which case it may take a little longer.

Flow and Pressure

As a general rule, with the tap full on, it should be possible to fill a one gallon (4.5 litre) bucket in 30 seconds.
If you believe that your water pressure is inadequate we will test it for you at Guernsey Water's controlling chamber where the pressure should not fall below 1.0 bar.

Drinking Water Quality

Our water will be safe and good to drink.
We will investigate any concerns that you have regarding water quality and take a sample of the water in your home for testing if necessary.
Guernsey Water monitors its treated water on a daily basis for bacteriological and chemical quality in line with the UK Drinking Water Regulations. The tests, which cover a range of around 130 different parameters, will be undertaken at three different stages in the water treatment process, namely at the water treatment works, at service reservoirs and at customers' taps.
We will publish our water quality results on an annual basis.

Wastewater

We will work with our customers to reduce the risk of foul water and surface water flooding from the public sewers. When flooding does unfortunately occur, we'll try to assist with alleviating the impact of that flooding. We'll also do our best to find out why it happened and look for solutions to help prevent it from happening again.
We will always investigate any public sewer issues that are reported to us by private drainage contractors or customers.
Food waste and non-flushables (such as baby wipes) should not be disposed of down your sink or toilet therefore we will endeavour to inform and educate as much as possible on this very important issue.