In April 2017, the non-household water supply market opened up for businesses, charities and public sector organisations in England meaning they are no longer restricted to buying water from their regional monopoly.  Thames Water had exited the non-household market ahead of this opening up and transferred their non-household customer base over to Castle Water. 

Contracting with a retailer means the council can secure value for money on the purchase of non-household water and wastewater services, whilst minimising the administrative burden through electronic billing capability along with collaborative work to reduce the council’s water footprint.

To enter into 2 year contracts for green electricity and green gas from SSE Ltd.

LASER carried out a market tender exercise to procure quarterly billed energy supply contracts (covering the council’s smaller energy consuming sites)

The process returned market offers from 3 suppliers for electricity and 3 suppliers for gas (including 2 offers of green gas supplies as required to meet Net Zero by 2020 objective agreed after the Climate Change Citizens’ Assembly)

Following assessment of the offers received by OCC Energy team and advice from LASER, the recommendation was to enter into 2 year contracts for green electricity and green gas from SSE Ltd. These were the best offers from a financial and service level perspective – also offering electronic billing, smart metering services, and certified green supplies – the latter as required to meet OCC commitments made from the citizens’ assembly to be Net Zero by 2020.

The Cabinet report had agreed to use LASER as the vehicle to purchase energy contracts following market research on alternative options and decision being agreed via Cabinet. Alternatives were considered via an OJEU compliant market tender exercise run by LASER via call off from their energy access agreement with various offers returned from the market.

Tim Sadler – Transition Director