
1 
These Regulations may be cited as the Water Supply and Sewerage Services (Customer Service Standards) (Amendment) Regulations 1996 and shall come into force on 1st January 1997.
2 

(1) The Water Supply and Sewerage Services (Customer Service Standards) Regulations 1989 shall be amended as follows.
(2) After regulation 7 there shall be inserted the following regulation—“
7AA 

(1) The water undertaker shall maintain a minimum pressure of water in a communication pipe serving premises supplied with water of seven metres static head.
(2) Where in any period of 28 days the pressure in a communication pipe falls below seven metres static head on two occasions each lasting not less than one hour, the undertaker shall, except in the circumstances described in paragraph (3), pay to the customer (or credit to his account) the sum of £25.
(3) The circumstances described in this paragraph are—
(a) that a payment under this regulation has already been made to the customer in respect of the same financial year;
(b) that the customer has not made a written claim for a payment under this regulation within three months from the date of the later of the two occasions on which the pressure fell below seven metres static head; or
(c) that industrial action by the employees of the undertaker or the act or default of a person other than an officer, employee or agent of the undertaker or a person acting on behalf of its agent made it impracticable to maintain the minimum pressure referred to in paragraph (1).
(4) This regulation does not apply where the pressure falls below the minimum pressure referred to in paragraph (1) in connection with the carrying out of necessary works or because of drought.
(5) In this regulation, “communication pipe” means—
(a) where the premises supplied with water abut on the part of the street in which the undertaker’s water main is laid, and the service pipe—
(i) enters those premises otherwise than through the outer wall of a building abutting on the street; and
(ii) has a stopcock placed in those premises and as near to the boundary of that street as is reasonably practical,
so much of the service pipe as lies between the water main and that stopcock;
(b) in any other case, so much of the service pipe as lies between the water main and the boundary of the street in which the water main is laid.”
Signed by authority of the Secretary of State for the Environment
Robert Jones
Minister of State,
Department of the Environment
2nd December 1996Signed by authority of the Secretary of State for Wales
Jonathan Evans
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State,
Welsh Office
3rd December 1996