Compliance

We require performance reporting and conduct regular audits of all licensed water utilities to ensure compliance with their licences.

Our Compliance and Enforcement Policy sets our principles of compliance and enforcement, risk-based regulatory model, compliance approach and enforcement action decision-making framework.

Public water utilities

We collect and publish annual performance information provided by Sydney Water, Hunter Water and Water NSW on water quality, system continuity and reliability, environmental performance and customer service. This ensures transparency and improves public confidence, as well as providing additional incentives to the utilities to perform to expectations and enable identification of areas for improvement.

In assessing compliance we also consider information from other regulators and complaints made to the Energy and Water Ombudsman.

We have been undertaking a customer satisfaction survey of some of the water utilities in NSW since August 2019. We currently survey customers of Hunter Water, Sydney Water and Central Coast council every 3 months. Read our current Fact Sheet - Customer Satisfaction Results - 2022-23 - August 2023

More information is available in the Audit Guideline.

Alternate water utilities

IPART also ensures regular audits of alternate water utilities that are licensed under the Water Industry Competition Act (WIC Act) minimise any risk to public health, safety and the environment.

Auditors undertaking these audits must be approved by IPART.

More information is available in the Audit Guideline.

Enforcement Action Notices

IPART may take enforcement actions in response to a non-compliance with a regulatory requirement, licence requirement or a direction from IPART.

We publish notices outlining enforcement actions in our enforcement action notice register below.

Enforcement Action Notice Register