Thames Water- Finished?

[RustyMX5]

Tankrizzo said:

"Customers should pay more because we ran the company into the ground whilst trousering bonuses and dividends"

fk off.

As a customer of TW, I wholeheartedly concur with this sentiment.

[Hugo Stiglitz]

RustyMX5 said:

Tankrizzo said:

"Customers should pay more because we ran the company into the ground whilst trousering bonuses and dividends"

fk off.

As a customer of TW, I wholeheartedly concur with this sentiment.

Yep. Almost like main dealer works on your car, admits they ordered the wrong parts, admits breaking parts causing more work and then says


But you are paying for it.

[s1962a]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68682198

Reading that makes my blood boil. This is water and sewage for fks sake - why are "investors" able to push our water companies to increase our bills so they get a decent return on their investment? I want to get clean water and I want my sewage taken away, and I am fine to pay a bill that goes to the water company to be able to do this, but don't want to have my bills increased so they can make a tidy profit. We are such mugs.

Nationalise the water companies, and put our taxes up if extra money is required to fix our infrastructure. Don't make it about profits. It's water and sewage for fks sake.

Who's idea was it to privatise our water companies anyway?

[Nomme de Plum]

1989.

Not difficult to ascertain which government advocated and carried out the privatisation of our utility services industries.

[Hammersia]

There was a very impressive lady, might have been Cat Hobbs, on the radio this morning making the case for nationalisation (with credible answers for debt repayment, administration etc.), from this campaign group:

https://weownit.org.uk/about-us

[mikees]

Google Thames Water and Macquarie. Its the same MO as the Glasers at ManUtd

[s1962a]

I found this article from last year. It does seem to be in dire straits.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/thames-water-...

https://archive.ph/KGLon

[Murph7355]

Condi said:

Not really, if there are 2 businesses in a market and 1 is very efficient and makes a lot of money but the other doesn't make much money then obviously the owners of the first business should be rewarded/paid for their success.

The problem with water is that the customers have no choice who they buy from, so there is no natural way for crap businesses to go bust and successful business to do well. The regulator decides how much they can charge, which is always a judgement and an opinion, rather than letting the market and competition decide.

I absolutely agree on water.

But this is far from the only example of companies hosing customers and providing crap service whilst rewarding themselves massively, but with no comeback.

Also, the notion of structuring for protection (if the TTT comments above are accurate) is something I do not think is in the spirit of how things should work. (And I am very much a markets/small govt type).

As noted, I don't think this was ever a good candidate for privatisation. I can imagine what may have prompted that decision (services were shoddy in the 70s and 80s), but it needs reversing and something more nuanced put in place to avoid things happening that prompted privatisation in the first place.

It may not need the whole industry reprivatising either. One or two being reappropriated might encourage the others to run a better ship.

[Bonefish Blues]

Good (shocking) summary here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001xr9s/new...

Feargal Sharkey at c7 mins doing what he now does best - rip away the bullst and obfuscation.

[phil4]

Lots of calls for re-nationalisation... but think about what that really means.

If it's anything like other things in this country it'll just mean different companies get to rip off the taxpayer/customer and make massive profits.

The government will turn to their approved suppliers list, and sub out all the work to them, who in turn will charge a small fortune to do the work, and we'll pick up the tab one way or another, while their shareholders make a fortune.

I'm not saying we should let them put the prices up. Nope, I'm just saying that I doubt re-nationalistation will acually change anything.

[Murph7355]

phil4 said:

Lots of calls for re-nationalisation... but think about what that really means.

If it's anything like other things in this country it'll just mean different companies get to rip off the taxpayer/customer and make massive profits.

The government will turn to their approved suppliers list, and sub out all the work to them, who in turn will charge a small fortune to do the work, and we'll pick up the tab one way or another, while their shareholders make a fortune.

I'm not saying we should let them put the prices up. Nope, I'm just saying that I doubt re-nationalistation will acually change anything.

I agree that it probably won't... But there's a fig leaf more accountability we can hold people to.

This is why I think some company rules need a tweak.

[aeropilot]

Murph7355 said:

Condi said:

Not really, if there are 2 businesses in a market and 1 is very efficient and makes a lot of money but the other doesn't make much money then obviously the owners of the first business should be rewarded/paid for their success.

The problem with water is that the customers have no choice who they buy from, so there is no natural way for crap businesses to go bust and successful business to do well. The regulator decides how much they can charge, which is always a judgement and an opinion, rather than letting the market and competition decide.

I absolutely agree on water.

But this is far from the only example of companies hosing customers and providing crap service whilst rewarding themselves massively, but with no comeback.

The idea was that these newly privatised companies would be able to generate increased profit that would be re-invested into upgrading the service....

However, unless you put legal protection at the time into when those companies were privatised, so that they had to put a certain fixed percentage of profit re-invested in the infrastructure (which I assume wasn't done) then like any private company, the first priority to to their shareholders, and hence we are where we are 3 decades later.

I still think water was the one utility that should not have been sold off, for the very reasons mentioned already, its a must have not a luxury, and people can't choose to go elsewhere.

[Wills2]

It's just another debacle to add to the growing list of debacles, it's shameful and cannot continue, these are the real issues facing the country and where we need immediate action, the water companies are acting like slum landlords and being allowed to get away with it, the regulators are not fit for purpose they are just full of people who want to get on the gravy train themselves.

They have to taken into public ownership or taken into a NFP status (which would probably be the best solution) enough of the financial engineering it serves no purpose other than to line the pockets of faceless investment funds at the expense of our environment and our ability to cope with the consequences of CC.

With the likes of Thames water being worthless it shouldn't cost too much to achieve either.

[S600BSB]

It really is an embarrassment the way utilities are run in the UK compared to most of the rest of Europe. Sadly we are a bit of a joke.

[aeropilot]

Wills2 said:

They have to taken into public ownership or taken into a NFP status (which would probably be the best solution) enough of the financial engineering it serves no purpose other than to line the pockets of faceless investment funds at the expense of our environment and our ability to cope with the consequences of CC.

If NFP it would likely mean that consumers 'might' be more willing to stomach bill increases to pay for better service as it should be clear that is what the extra money is for at least...........rather than as now.

[Bonefish Blues]

aeropilot said:

Murph7355 said:

Condi said:

Not really, if there are 2 businesses in a market and 1 is very efficient and makes a lot of money but the other doesn't make much money then obviously the owners of the first business should be rewarded/paid for their success.

The problem with water is that the customers have no choice who they buy from, so there is no natural way for crap businesses to go bust and successful business to do well. The regulator decides how much they can charge, which is always a judgement and an opinion, rather than letting the market and competition decide.

I absolutely agree on water.

But this is far from the only example of companies hosing customers and providing crap service whilst rewarding themselves massively, but with no comeback.

The idea was that these newly privatised companies would be able to generate increased profit that would be re-invested into upgrading the service....

However, unless you put legal protection at the time into when those companies were privatised, so that they had to put a certain fixed percentage of profit re-invested in the infrastructure (which I assume wasn't done) then like any private company, the first priority to to their shareholders, and hence we are where we are 3 decades later.

I still think water was the one utility that should not have been sold off, for the very reasons mentioned already, its a must have not a luxury, and people can't choose to go elsewhere.

OFWAT has had a Statutory Duty since Day 1 to prevent the payment of dividends if they militated against necessary investment.

The controls are there, but they haven't been enforced. Instead numerous OFWAT senior managers have moved across to the water companies. It's all been terribly cosy, and government hasn't regulated the Regulator

[Seasonal Hero]

I'm not sure there's a single regulator who actually does a good job. Ofwat have been pathetic.

[Bonefish Blues]

Seasonal Hero said:

I'm not sure there's a single regulator who actually does a good job. Ofwat have been pathetic.

£72Bn allowed in dividends, massive debts run up, fk all investment, st running down rivers.

I've been bashing my gums about this for years, but it's only now that there's traction.

[CraigyMc]

Seasonal Hero said:

I'm not sure there's a single regulator who actually does a good job. Ofwat have been pathetic.

They've been fking awesome -- if you are a financial services group.

[Condi]

Bonefish Blues said:

OFWAT has had a Statutory Duty since Day 1 to prevent the payment of dividends if they militated against necessary investment.

The controls are there, but they haven't been enforced. Instead numerous OFWAT senior managers have moved across to the water companies. It's all been terribly cosy, and government hasn't regulated the Regulator

The problem has been that loading the companies with debt wasn't an issue at the time, but built in structural long term problems which were made more acute as interest rates rose and more of the cash coming in had to be paid to finance the debt. Combined with the pressure to improve performance, ie invest in new sewers, treatment plants etc mean that they have little headroom to borrow to invest.

The regulator thought they were regulating a water company, what they actually should have been regulating was the financial slight of hand going on.


For balance the rate of sewage spills is lower now than it was when the companies were nationalised. Part of the reason they were privatised was the investment needed to improve water quality and the government didn't want to undertake that investment itself.