Does the water industry honestly think it can fool the British public? (Image: Getty)
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of London last November for the March for Clean Water, the biggest peaceful protest this country has ever seen. Why? Because after decades of neglect, mismanagement, and profiteering by water companies, the public has had enough. And yet, instead of genuine accountability and reform, today we’re gaslit by the water industry as it announces huge bill rises.
We’re meant to celebrate ‘record investment’ as if it’s some great act of corporate generosity. But let’s be clear: this is not an investment for the public good. It’s further profiteering – paid for by us.
For 15 years the nation’s environmental regulators have been defunded by at least 70%, stripping them of the resources needed to enforce the law. Even the new government, with its environmentally insane quest for economic growth, has already made 1.8% real-term cuts to the Department for Environment sustainable farming budget, with more likely to come in the spring Spending Review.
This deliberate weakening of oversight has allowed polluters to operate without fear of meaningful consequences. Water companies have taken full advantage, prioritising dividends, high creditor and executive pay over maintaining infrastructure, all while treating our rivers, lakes, and seas as open sewers.
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When fines do eventually come, they’re mere pocket change in comparison to the billions extracted in profit and building towering piles of junk debt attracting massive . The ‘stick’ simply isn’t big enough to force them to change their business practices.
And now, after years of neglect, we’re being asked to pay even more. Ofwat, the water industry regulator, approved a staggering £20billion in investment for the next financial year, the highest ever in a single year. Over the next five years, water companies are set to spend £104billion. That might sound like a serious commitment to fixing the problem, but let’s not forget why this spending is necessary in the first place.
For decades, instead of reinvesting in the infrastructure that delivers and treats our water, these companies funnelled billions into investor pockets. The result? A system so broken that we now face environmental devastation – with 3.6 millions hours of raw sewage in 2023 – and skyrocketing bills to patch up the damage.
Using Thames Water as an example, a third of my water bill doesn’t go toward improving the service – it goes to servicing company debt – accrued while paying out record dividends. Yet the water industry expects us to believe this new investment is a solution. It isn’t. It’s an attempt to maintain a broken status quo, one in which the public shoulders the cost of corporate failure while those responsible walk away richer than ever.
This is a systemic failure enabled by weak regulation and government inaction. If the fines imposed on water companies were actually designed to deter wrongdoing they would be proportional to their soaring revenues. Instead, utilities continue to dump raw sewage into our waterways, knowing any financial penalties are a fraction of the money they make from raising our bills.
The public anger that fuelled the March for Clean Water wasn’t just about water companies – it was about the wider failure of our political and regulatory systems to protect the environment and hold corporate polluters accountable. That anger isn’t going away.
People are sick of watching local rivers and beaches turned into toxic wastelands and vital natural habitats destroyed. And they’re sick of being told they have to pay more while executives reward themselves for running essential services into the ground.
Broken utilities like Thames Water should be put into Special Administration and brought back into government control – writing off their £19billion of bad debt and then refinanced at a lower cost of debt.
The idea that private monopolies can be trusted to act in the public interest has been shattered. Decades of underinvestment and profiteering prove the current system isn’t fit for purpose. It’s time to take back control of our water.
Across the Channel we see numerous alternative finance and governance structures that allow water company operators to deliver high quality, affordable services, while protecting the environment, and all under effective local and national municipal oversight.
Our government must ensure the new Independent Water Commission is robust and recommends an urgent transition to a sustainable and resilient water and sewage system for future generations but should also have the power to impose deterrent-level penalties and even criminal prosecutions against executives. Polluters must be held accountable, and long-term investment must be prioritised over short-term investor returns.
We cannot allow water companies to rewrite the narrative. This is not about ‘investment’ and courting ‘international markets’; it’s about repairing the damage caused by decades of greed and regulatory failure. Our rivers don’t need economic growth, they enable it.
The public sees through the dirty brown veil of deception spun by the water industry, and we won’t accept empty promises and lies any longer. The new Labour government must act like we are in a freshwater emergency, stop pandering to noisy investment markets and put our rivers and water security at the top of their economic priorities.