Shareholder investment in the top ten privatised UK water and sewage companies has decreased by £5.5bn since privatisation. while dividend payments have increased to £72.8bn according to a new analysis by the University of Greenwich.
"Britain’s debt-laden water utilities are being encouraged by the regulator Ofwat to set up new privately financed companies to deliver billions of pounds worth of critical infrastructure such as reservoirs, treatment works and pipelines, which will be paid for through customer bills"
Outrageous. Nationalise them without compensation and abolish Ofwat, which is totally compromised.
Spills of raw sewage into England's rivers & seas reached their worst on record last year.
Discharges by water companies of untreated sewage doubled from 1.8 million hours in 2022 to a record 3.6 million in 2023, according to new Environment Agency data.
The number of individual spills also soared by 54%, from 301,000 in 2022 to 464,000 in 2023.
Opinion: The UK's returned to Victorian levels of hygiene in the pursuit of profit
The #Tories are claiming they have instructed #OfWat to ban (or constrain) bonus payments to #Water company executives whose companies have been illegally polluting water courses....
However, first comes the consolation on how to do (and as usual that will be consulting with the firms themselves included), before (no doubt) watering down or abandoning proposals later on....
I'm not sure I should be celebrating, but according to #OfWat, the #NorthWest's #water utility have done well enough on their service targets, to raise their prices unlike almost all the others who have been required to return money to consumers via lower bill due to badly underperforming.... Oh well
Professor Carolyn Roberts, an environmental and water consultant, is taking six English water companies to court over allegations of underreporting pollution incidents and “unfairly overcharging” customers. This is the first environmental collective action case of its kind.
The initial claim, brought on behalf of eight million people against Severn Trent Water, is estimated to be worth more than £330m. #Environment#Water#Sewage#ClassAction#UK#OfWat
For customers of #SouthWestWater, this will come as no surprise, but in the two years to March 2022, SWW spent more on interest payments & #dividends than it did on maintaining (improving) its infrastructure....
You can decide for yourself whether this in any way contributed to their catastrophic failure of #water supply early this year.
That this included a 'special dividend' approved by #OfWat merely confirms that the regulator(s) have been asleep at the wheel.