According to the Consumer Council for Water, customer complaints about UK water companies have reached record levels in the past 12 months.

A report from the water watchdog found that almost 273,000 complaints were made during the financial year to April 2008, an 11 per cent increase year on year.

The bulk of the grievances were levelled at Southern Water, where complaints increased by more than 150 per cent, as well as at Anglian Water and South East Water. Significantly, more than half of the complaints pertained to billing and charges.

Responding to the report, Southern Water said that during the first half of 2007/08, it had received a higher than usual number of complaints following the introduction of a new £20 million billing system. It said that now ‘the initial teething problems’ had been overcome, it was delivering improvements, introducing new services and increasing efficiency.

South East Water and Anglian Water also attributed the number of complaints to the implementation of new billing systems, but assured that there were now no major problems with the systems.

South West Water said it regretted any complaints and was working with its new partner, Accenture, ‘to provide first-class customer billing and account services’.

Before 2005/06, year-on-year written complaints were at a relatively steady level. Since then, however, the Consumer Council for Water said, there has been a steep rise across the industry because of problems with certain companies causing an overall rise in customer complaints.