Adopting national coronavirus support principles into water codes 2020

From 1 December 2021, according to section 187A(2) of the Water Industry Act 1994, the Customer Service Codes are taken to be Water Industry Standards made under section 4F of the Water Industry Act 1994.

We temporarily amended our water customer service codes to incorporate National Cabinet agreed principles for hardship support during the coronavirus pandemic.

Embedding these national principles into our codes ensured Victoria’s consumer protection framework was:

• consistent
• transparent
• accessible for the benefit of all.

Many of the protections outlined in the national principles were already regulated in some way through our water customer service codes. Areas extended by the national principles include:

• expanded hardship support for small businesses customers
• coronavirus specific measures such as halting supply restrictions, debt collection and debt recovery. 

We also recognise that some of the national principles' measures were designed to be temporary and elements were already being considered a part of business as usual practice prior to the pandemic. For example, the emphasis on proactive communications and extending support to small business customers. Stakeholders who took part in our 2019 review of the water customer service codes supported including these elements into a reformed water customer service code. This review looked at which elements of the national principles ought to be carried forward into a reformed code.

The affected codes are the:

• Customer Service Code – Urban Water Businesses
• Rural Water Customer Service Code.