Our response to the Citizens' Jury's recommendations
We recently met with our Citizens’ Jury for the final time to formally respond to their Recommendations.
The Jurors spent more than 40 hours over three months addressing their challenge: ‘We need to find a balance between price and service which is fair for everyone. How should we do this?’
The Jury:
- explored the insights from our customer research and engagement,
- heard from experts chosen and elected by our stakeholders and the Jury,
- read submissions made by the public, and
- considered the details provided in our comprehensive Jury information pack.
Their Recommendations were provided to our Chair, Sue O’Connor and our Managing Director, Pat McCafferty for the Board’s review and consideration at the Jury’s final meeting.
Yarra Valley Water will pursue all ten of the Citizens’ Jury recommendations. Eight of the recommendations will be fully adopted with some minor variations to the remaining two.
We will use these Recommendations to anchor our price submission and focus our business efforts overall to deliver greater value to our customers. While customers want to avoid increases to their bill increase, they have also told us that small annual price changes are better than a single large change, and they value increased service levels over a bill decrease.
We know that affordability of essential services is an important issue for households and businesses. We are committed to delivering productivity savings to take pressure off prices and pass these savings onto customers. We will continue to support customers having difficulty paying their bill with sensitivity and empathy, and ensure that a genuine inability to pay does not compromise access to essential water and sanitation services.