Our Price Submission Deliberative Forum was a unique opportunity for customers and community members to take part in a democratic decision-making process to influence our services and pricing from 1 July 2026.

This group was made up of 30 people from different backgrounds across our region. They were chosen independently to make sure the panel fairly represented our community.

We asked the participants to help us answer the following question:

Our communities are growing and our climate is changing. How do we work together to plan for the future so we can continue to provide safe, reliable, sustainable and affordable services for generations to come?

We followed the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) framework and chose the ‘Collaborate’ level of involvement. This means we made a clear promise to the panel:

We will look to you for advice and innovation and will incorporate your advice and recommendations into decisions to the maximum extent possible and provide reasons where we are unable to do so.

The group met over five days between January and March 2025, including three in-person sessions and two online meetings. These focused on:

• Tariffs: How North East Water balances fixed and volumetric charges on bills
• Growth: How North East Water balances investment in growth and compliance with affordability
• Water and Wastewater Systems: Should North East Water raise, lower or keep our current service standards for water and wastewater systems.

The forum provided a set of 22 recommendations. Of those recommendations, we will implement 20 in full.

Key recommendations from the group included:

• Increasing customer bills by 4.92% to 5.78% to support a capital investment of $250–$300 million.
• Expanding support for customers experiencing hardship.
• Adjusting tariffs by raising fixed charges and lowering variable charges to ensure water security in a changing climate, fund infrastructure renewal and replacement, and create fairer pricing for renters, large families and vulnerable customers.

Participants then reconvened for a sixth session to review updates on our modelling, pricing impacts and how their recommendations were being incorporated.

They unanimously agreed that North East Water has delivered on its promise to implement their recommendations to the maximum extent possible.