The government is consulting on plans to double compensation payments for customers when their basic water services are disrupted.

Subject to an eight-week consultation, the proposals will double payments for all existing standards and will more than double the payments for certain highly disruptive incidents, such as when water companies fail to provide notice of supply interruptions and miss arranged appointments with customers.

The government will also expand the list of circumstances that can trigger compensation, including automatic payments for boil notices when drinking water standards drop, or when water companies fail to conduct meter readings or installations as promised.

The changes would mean that recent outages in Brixham and Bramley earlier this year would have automatically led to compensation for all customers, where there was no entitlement before.

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