Thanks to Dottie for alerting me to this:
From the Guardian today, the above and:
Customer complaints over water bills surge by 50% in England and Wales – Number of households complaining rises to 16,000 in 2025, with Southern Water the biggest target. Complaints about water companies in England and Wales to an independent monitor surged by more than 50% last year, as customers bristled at steep bill increases. More than 16,000 complaints were lodged in 2025 with the Consumer Council for Water (CCW), a government-sponsored body that represents customers’ interests.1
Scottish Water does not publish broken-down complaints, but for all complaints, in 2024/2025, there were 391.2
All things being equal, per head of population, even using the all complaints figure for Scotland, you might expect England & Wales to have had around 4 300 but they had 16 000, nearly four times as many.
What might explain the above? This, in the last lines of the same Guardian report:
England is the only country in the world with a fully privatised water system. The government controls water supply in Scotland and Northern Ireland, while much of Wales is supplied by the not-for-profit Dŵr Cymru.
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 