Price Submission 5: First Nations Survey

Background

NEW is currently engaging with our stakeholders, customers and communities on our next price submission, set to commence in July 2026.

All Victorian water corporations are required to develop and submit price submissions, generally every five years. The Price Submission outlines the prices customers pay for water and sewerage, service standards, as well as infrastructure and operational investments over the regulatory period.

We are using a six-stage framework to engage over an eighteen-month period.

What have we done so far?

Early engagement activities included the development of our Strategy 2040, our new Customer Support Fair Practice Plan, the establishment of the Customer and Community Advisory Group, and three developer forums, where Council representatives have been invited to attend.

Engagement has included customer and stakeholder interviews, a customer expectations survey, focus groups with specific customer groups and 17 town kiosks. This provided us with an understanding of our customer expectations and tested our Customer Outcomes, which we developed in the last price submission.

We conducted a bill simulator; priorities survey and more focus groups to understand customers’ willingness to pay for the services they said were important to them in the early stages.

Next stage is to further engage with our key stakeholders, including local government, traditional owners and major customers, to understand your views and concerns.

This will be followed by a four-day deliberative forum, where a panel of 45 independently selected people will consider topics such as growth and our tariff structure, before making recommendations to our Board based on what they feel is right for our region. The forum will consider all the feedback from the previous engagements.