IPART held a public hearing on 21 February 2023 on SDP’s proposed costs and prices from 1 July 2023

In September 2023, we received a pricing proposal from Sydney Desalination Plant Pty Ltd (SDP) for the review of its water supply and security services in the Greater Sydney region from 1 July 2023.

On 29 November 2022, we released our Issues Paper that set out our proposed approach to determining the prices. A number of stakeholders provided feedback on our paper and their submissions can be accessed here.

On 21 February 2023, we held a hybrid public hearing as part of our stakeholder consultation process for the SDP water price review. The public hearing gave stakeholders another opportunity to have their say on our price review for SDP before we release our Draft Report in April 2023.

The public hearing had 4 sessions:

  • Session A was an overview of the price review and presentation by SDP
  • Session B was a discussion of SDP’s proposed service levels and costs
  • Session C was a discussions of SDP’s proposed incentives and risk mechanisms
  • Session D was a discussion of SDP’s proposed pricing arrangements.

Each session included a question and answer discussion following the presentations, where stakeholders could ask questions to SDP and to IPART on key issues.

In addition, key themes that were discussed included the impact of SDP’s new operating environment on services and costs, balancing risk between SDP and customers, and incentives to ensure the long-run interest of customers.

Public hearing materials

The agenda, complete presentation slides, and video recording transcript can be accessed as follows:

Stakeholders may make an access application to view the public hearing video under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009.

We have listened to stakeholders’ views and will consider all feedback and comments when we make our draft decisions and recommendations for our Draft Report, to be released in April 2023.