Ofwat has been working to ensure effective competition to water and sewerage undertakers as regards new connections services to developers for some years now.

Back in 2014 Ofwat closed a Competition Act 1998 abuse of dominance case against Bristol Water as it had obtained undertakings from Bristol Water that it would take certain actions to ensure that Self Lay providers could compete with Bristol Water's pipe laying activities on a fair basis.  These undertakings have only recently been released.

This is a market which could theoretically be competitive such that Ofwat no longer needs to regulate in this area and can rely on competition law, given the presence of new appointees (NAVs) and self-lay providers (SLPs).

However, Ofwat is now looking at how it regulates the developer services market as part of the 2024 Price Review (PR24), and seeking additional data from companies to do so (Gathering-data-about-developer-services-data-request-2020-21.pdf (ofwat.gov.uk)).  In particular, Ofwat is seeking to understand the current state of the market better to assess the degree of contestability of services across different types of new development and different regions of England and Wales.  It seems that Ofwat is looking to define a number of sub-markets in product and geographic terms in developer services.  

This look like it has the potential to get quite involved...