1.1 Research has been commissioned by the Drinking Water Inspectorate to ensure that the views of consumers on drinking water quality issues would be taken into account when the level of future water bills are next set. The research looked at consumer preferences and issues of concern about drinking water.

1.2 Consumers are in no doubt as to their highest priority - they want safe clean drinking water before reliability of supply or reduction of river pollution. 70% of consumers were satisfied with the quality of their drinking water, and 3 out of 4 people drank it directly from the tap. There was an overall reluctance to pay more on their water bills. There were wide regional variations in the level of concern and willingness to pay.

2.1 The Periodic Review will determine new price limits to come into effect from 1 April 2000 for water companies in England and Wales. To ensure that provision is made in the Review for the views of consumers on drinking water quality issues, the Drinking Water Inspectorate commissioned research into consumer preferences and issues of concern on drinking water.

2.2 The Inspectorate's research was carried out in two stages by market research contractors managed by the Central Office of Information. In the first stage, qualitative research using focus groups was undertaken in February 1998 to provide information on consumer preferences and issues of concern in relation to drinking water. A total of eight focus groups were conducted located in Oldham, Exeter, Edgware and Norwich. The key objectives of this stage of the research were to explore whether consumers regarded drinking water quality as a cause for concern and if so which aspects were of concern and whether these concerns could be prioritised. A further objective was to investigate whether consumers would be prepared to pay more for water to enable their concerns to be dealt with. The focus groups provided a number of hypotheses for testing.

2.3 These hypotheses were largely confirmed by the second, quantitative, stage of research undertaken at the end of March 1998. This took the form of an omnibus survey in England and Wales, consisting of a total sample of 1860 adults aged 15+ representative of all adults. Presentation of results included breakdowns for age, sex, socio-economic grade, and standard Government region.

3.1 The conclusions recording the views of the people in the focus groups were as follows.

Attitudes towards Drinking Water

3.2 Many people who did not drink tap water had not done so for many years, often out of habit. They may be continuing something started by parents or may have been turned away from drinking tap water by a specific event, such as:

• moving house and disliking the taste of the water in the new home;
• having a major or ongoing discolouration problem;
• "incidents" such as the cryptosporidium scare in Three Valleys Water area of supply.

3.3 Overall, those who drank their tap water were very happy with it. They often struggled to find any concerns and these tended to be only minor ones.

3.4 Conversely, those who did not drink tap water avoided it because of their concerns. As previous research by the Inspectorate indicated, people did not drink their tap water mainly because of taste and appearances preferences, not because of concerns about the safety of the water.

3.5 As with the findings from the previous qualitative research, people expected water to be crystal clear and pure tasting. Therefore, if it did not taste or look right then, amongst some people, there was the feeling that there must be something wrong with it.

3.6 On the whole, however, there were very few concerns about the safety of tap water. Any that existed tended to be due to a lack of knowledge about, for example:

• the cause of variations in taste;
• the reasons why water was cloudy;
• whether dirt or rust in water could be harmful in some way;
• the effect of chlorine or cleaning agents etc. on health; and
• whether the level of substances thought to be harmful (such as lead, aluminium, fluoride, pesticides, fertilisers etc), and perceived to be getting into the water supply, were high enough in drinking water to constitute a health risk.

Issues of interest to the Inspectorate

3.7 The research looked at three issues of particular interest to the Inspectorate as follows.

Lead in Drinking Water

3.8 The levels of lead in drinking water were assumed by people to be safe. However, many people, particularly women, would be concerned if the level exceeded the standard, but queried how they would know if it was. If it was proven that the level was a health risk then some people would want to take corrective action.

3.9 Many people expected the responsibility for sorting out the problem to lie with the water company and reacted angrily when they found out the property owner would be liable for the replacement of any lead pipes.

3.10 As the situation stands, very few would actually take corrective action because:

• they did not consider themselves to be at risk because they did not drink the water anyway, they did not have lead pipes or they had doubts whether the risk really existed;
• they did not consider it to be their problem, i.e those in rented accommodation expected the issue to be ignored by landlords (unless forced to do something about it) and were not prepared to pay for the work themselves;
• the expected costs involved would be too great (in excess of £400); and
• they were not prepared to put up with the disruption (although the relining of lead pipes was considered to be a way of reducing this).

3.11 In theory, for many, the involvement of the water company in any corrective action was not considered to be a problem. In practice, however, they were expected to be more expensive than alternative contractors. Others, on the other hand, were very suspicious of their water company.

Discolouration of Water

3.12 A large number of people had been affected by discoloured water and this was the reason why a sizeable number did not drink tap water.

3.13 For a number of reasons, nobody was prepared to pay more on their water bills in order to speed up the replacement of mains pipes:

• discoloured water was no more than an irritant, thus people were prepared to wait;
• as with findings from the previous research, cloudy water was more of a concern than dirty or rusty water and replacing mains pipes would only rectify the latter; and
• many felt the water companies should already be providing clean water.

"Bugs" in Water

3.14 Those people in unaffected areas (i.e Oldham and Norwich) had no concern at all about "bugs" in their tap water.

3.15 To those people who drank their tap water in the affected areas, i.e Exeter and Edgware, "bugs" were of little concern. These people tended to view the cryptosporidium "incidents" (in Torbay and the Three Valleys Water area) as genuine accidents which happen from time to time. They were not concerned about further outbreaks.

3.16 There was the suggestion that the general public was becoming overly concerned about the harmful effect of germs, wherever they occur, and that the total elimination of germs could in fact be detrimental to health as the body does not then have the opportunity to build up immunity to them.

3.17 Those who did not drink their tap water in Exeter and Edgware saw the contamination of drinking water by "bugs" such as cryptosporidium as another reason not to drink it. In fact, it was the reason why about half of the sample of those who did not drink their water in Edgware stopped drinking their tap water.

3.18 Nobody was prepared to pay more on their water bills in order to reduce the risk of illness through "bugs" in water. For those people who saw it as a concern, they felt that the water company had caused the problem so they should sort it out.

3.19 The water companies' handling of the incidents generated much bad feeling among people. Firstly, it was felt the difficulty in making a causal link between "bugs" in water and illness in consumers was used as an excuse by water companies to avoid accepting responsibility for the incidents. Secondly, the water companies were perceived as being very slow to admit there was a problem and to advise consumers to boil their water. Together, these points reinforced some peoples' lack of trust in both the company and the tap water.

Priority given to addressing concerns

3.20 For most people, paying their water bills meant that they were paying for good quality drinking water, therefore ensuring good quality is the highest priority for them. This means tackling anything that could conceivably be a health risk, although people were not necessarily concerned that all the issues represented a risk at present.

3.21 Following water quality, repairing leaks was of greatest priority. It was felt that this should result in a reduction in the size of bills as less clean water would be wasted.

3.22 Environmental issues relating to the contamination of the water supply were also of priority to some people in so far as cleaner river water would result in purer and cheaper drinking water.

3.23 Of relatively lower priority were those issues not directly affecting people either because they had not experienced them, such as water supply problems, water shortages, and low water levels, or because they could avoid them, such as not going into "polluted" bathing water.

Preferred changes to water bills

3.24 Key to understanding peoples' willingness to pay for improvements to their drinking water, the water supply, or environmental issues are their attitudes towards water companies. A large number of people expressed some criticism of the companies, particularly of Three Valleys Water and South West Water.

3.25 At the extreme, people who did not drink their tap water in Exeter had very strong views about the high level of their water bills (and the lack of explanation for this) and were very critical of South West Water. This resulted in a complete lack of trust in anything the Company says or does, and for some, a complete lack of trust in their water.

3.26 With very few exceptions, no one was willing to pay more to finance any improvements. It was considered that enough money was already being paid to the water companies and that these issues should have been addressed before now. Overwhelmingly, people felt that further improvements should be financed through an increased share of profits being put back into investment programmes.

3.27 Only a small minority of people would be prepared to forgo a cut in their water bills and even fewer would be willing to pay between £10 and £20 a year more to fund the things they saw as important. Preference, however, was for a one-off payment of around £20 to clear all the problems. There were, however, three provisos:

• guarantees that the money would be used for specific purposes;
• all work to be carried out within a specified time frame; and
• once the improvements had been made, water bills would be cut.