Commerce Commission confirms it will not step in to keep Wellington water bills down

The Commerce Commission says it won't step in to keep water bills down for Wellingtonians right now.Water bills under agency Tiaki Wai are increasing by an average of 13.3 percent this year, and are projected to reach over $6000 per year in a decade.Commerce Commission chairperson John Small told Nine to Noon the agency's costs far exceeded the money it currently collects from Wellingtonians."Right or wrong, affordability is not something that is within our mandate. What our mandate is, is to make sure that the assets are being managed properly and that prices are not out of line with costs."Questions have been mounting over whether the Commission will step in to regulate prices - Wellington Mayor Andrew Little and deputy mayor Ben McNulty have called for it - as some residents have expressed shock and protested against the trajectory of bills in the coming years.Small said the Commission would only step in if it made a beneficial difference to people, and it didn't want to see the agency's revenue get "way out of line" with costs - but there was no sign of that right now, with the amount of investment the agency needed to make.Asked about whether the company was "technically insolvent", Small said that wasn't his understanding.He said the Commerce Commission is imposing performance requirement rules on Tiaki Wai to make it report regularly on its progress in upgrading the region's infrastructure, and instruct it to do things."We can say to a company look we need you to report to us on a regular basis on this particular project."He said these rules were still being worked out, but suggested that monitoring how many kilometres of pipes were being fixed against Tiaki Wai's goals."What we want to do is provide extra assurance to people that the plans that Tiaki Wai has made are actually going to be executed and that we'll get early warning if they're not."Tiaki Wai chief executive Michael Brewster.RNZIn a statement, Tiaki Wai chief executive Michael Brewster said it knew many households are stretched and it was asking people to pay more for water."We don't take that lightly."Brewster said people were entitled to have confidence in how their money was being spent, and he welcomed the role of the Commerce Commission include "independent checking" of its plans.About 12.5 kilometres of pipe had been renewed in the first three months, and the agency was on track for between 35km and 49km this year.He said Tiaki Wai had only been operating for three and a half months, and there was a long way to go.