We are reviewing new customer contributions (NCC) to address key issues we identified from recent water price reviews.
Review of New Customer Contributions
- Release of consultation paper15 August 2024
- Submissions close15 November 2024
- Draft recommendation for new customer contributionsEarly-2025
- Feedback on draft new customer contributionsMid-2025
- Industry training closesEnd-2025
- New guidance for new customer contributionsMid-2026
Overview
New customer contributions (NCC)
New customer contributions (NCC) are one-off charges levied by water businesses on a property owner applying to connect to a water business’s works or applying to receive increased services. These charges are a contribution towards the costs of works used directly or indirectly for the provision of the services that will benefit the property.
The objectives of the new customer contributions framework administered by the commission are to:
- send signals to developers about the costs of developing in different locations
- share the costs and benefits of growth between new and existing customers
- administer customer contributions for new development in a transparent way.
Our review of the new customer contributions
The current new customer contributions framework has been in place since 2013. We are reviewing the framework to address the following issues:
- inconsistent and unjustified cost attribution for growth and non-growth assets
- apparent preference for common pricing approaches even in areas that had materially varied costs
- negotiating framework requirements were inadequately met
- lack of transparency in the information provided to stakeholders
- uncertainty around gifted or reticulated assets
- timing of development and development servicing plans that are often changed, unpublished, or not committed to by some water businesses
- application of an average incremental cost approach to calculate customer contributions charges by some water businesses as opposed to the net incremental costs adopted by our current new customer contributions framework.
On 15 August 2024, we released a consultation paper providing details of the issues we intend to address through this review.
Feedback on the consultation paper
Submissions on our consultation paper closed at 11pm on 15 November 2024.
Next steps
Your feedback will shape the issues we will consider during our review, as well as the choice of solutions we would put forward to bring about consistency in the framework implementation.
We will summarise and analyse any feedback received and use them to inform our draft and final guidance on the NCC.
You can also participate in our public consultation meetings when the dates are announced on our website.