Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Egregious pillaging to the tune of £85 billion?
As the Independent reports, the review, led by former Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe, has recommended far-reaching changes to the way the water system is regulated, calling the current landscape "fragmented and overlapping", and suggesting that ministers should ditch Ofwat and simplify the system with a powerful regulator looking at every area.
It also advised removing the regulatory roles of the Environment Agency and Natural England, which monitor the sector's impact on nature, such as companies illegally dumping sewage into waterways:
Sir Jon told BBC Breakfast: "Bills are going to rise by 30% over the next five years. There are some inescapable facts here. The cost of producing water and dealing with our wastewater is going up. Climate change, higher environmental standards, demographic pressure, the population is going up. Just that need to renew ageing infrastructure.
"The problem comes when you suddenly go from not investing for a long period, to massive investment, in order to catch up. That's really what's driven those huge bill increases that we've seen.
"We need to help the most vulnerable, we also need to smooth that over a long period so that people can cope with the higher costs of water. And the regulators have a really important job in squeezing efficiency, incentivising the companies to be more efficient."
The campaign group, We Own It, is particularly damning about the impact of privatisation on the environment and on consumer bills. They say that:
* Since privatisation, £85 billion has gone to shareholders - over £2 billion a year on average
* The water companies have built up a debt mountain of over £60 billion and used this to finance dividends for shareholders
* The average pay for a water company CEO is £1.7 million a year. The biggest earner is Steve Mogford, CEO of United Utilities, on £2.9 million
* Our bills have gone up by 40% in real terms since privatisation
* Water companies are leaking away up to a fifth of their supply
* The Environment Agency has said that by 2050 some rivers will see 50-80% less water during the summer months – so water is a precious resource we need to conserve
* Every day, the water companies discharge raw sewage into our rivers and seas more than 1000 times on average - over 9 million hours since 2016
* Only 14 percent of English rivers are considered to have good ecological status
* In Scotland, water is in public ownership. Bills are lower and rivers and seas are cleaner
* Publicly owned Scottish Water has spent £72 more per household per year (35% more) than the English water companies. If England had invested at this rate, an extra £28 billion would have gone into the infrastructure to tackle problems like leaks and sewage. Water bills in Scotland are £113 cheaper on average
Reading this litany of facts it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that our water industry has been pillaged of its resources over a twenty five year period, and that the only acceptable solution to these acts is to take it all back into public ownership.
