The Director is appointed for a fixed term by the Secretary of State for the Department of the Environment, Transport and Regions in consultation with The National Assembly for Wales. He must comply with the statutory duties laid down in the Water Industry Act 1991. He may only be removed for incapacity or mis-behaviour. He is required to carry out his statutory duties and, in the performance of these, he has to make a wide range of judgements about how to use them to achieve his objectives. He is not subject to direction about what those judgements should be.
Regulators are independent of Ministers.
The Director must make an annual report to the Secretary of State and the First Secretary of the National Assembly for Wales which is laid before Parliament and published. They have statutory duties to identify concerns and represent the views of customers and investigate customers' complaints. The link between the CSCs and the regulator means that the customer interest has a significant and continuous presence in his work and they work closely together. He regularly consults the CSCs for their views on policy matters affecting the interests of customers. The Ofwat National Customer Council was established to strengthen customer representation.