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
- Release of What we heard from stakeholders and next steps paperLate May 2025
- Consultation on What we heard and next steps paperMay to June 2025
- Industry workshopsAug- Sept 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- timing of development and development servicing plans that are often changed, unpublished, or not committed to by some water businesses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
We consulted on our consultation paper between 15 August and 15 November 2024 . All feedback received will be reviewed and will assist us in our next phase of the review.
- We received 22 submissions including 5 confidential submissions.
- We met with water businesses and other interested stakeholders.
The public submissions can be viewed in the resources tab of this page.
What we heard from stakeholders and next steps paper
We are currently drafting this paper which sets out our response to your feedback. We plan to release this paper in late May for your feedback.
Next steps
We are currently reviewing your feedback to the consultation paper and incorporating it into the upcoming What we heard from stakeholders and next steps paper. We look forward to your feedback on this next paper, which brings us one step closer to new guidance for new customer contributions.
Resources
Submissions on our consultation paper
We consulted on our consultation paper until 15 November 2024. We received 22 submissions including 5 confidential submissions.
We consider each submission in the next step of our new customer contributions review. See our Submissions Policy for how we approach anonymous and confidential submissions.