Thames Water- Finished?

[matrignano]

s1962a said:

They can FRO if they want to increase my bills by 40% so that shareholders can get a return on their investment.

Cancel your direct debit

[Bonefish Blues]

matrignano said:

s1962a said:

They can FRO if they want to increase my bills by 40% so that shareholders can get a return on their investment.

Cancel your direct debit

I did that when they took over a year to pony up my £2K+ refund after a leak on the supply side. Even their own Customer Relations said they were a sack of st. I might start getting awfully tardy with my payments.

[s1962a]

Bonefish Blues said:

matrignano said:

s1962a said:

They can FRO if they want to increase my bills by 40% so that shareholders can get a return on their investment.

Cancel your direct debit

I did that when they took over a year to pony up my £2K+ refund after a leak on the supply side. Even their own Customer Relations said they were a sack of st. I might start getting awfully tardy with my payments.

I have to keep reminding myself all this bullst is over them supplying water and taking away sewage.

[CraigyMc]

Hants PHer said:

In order to fix the problem, i.e. stop the sewage discharges, a very large investment will be needed. The key question is how that will be funded. I'd imagine that further borrowing by Thames Water itself is not feasible, given current gearing (or is it? Anyone know for sure?). TW's major shareholders have already refused to inject more equity funds, AIUI.

So it's down to either TW's customers and/or the British Government. Saying to hard pressed customers "Sorry, but due to previous mismanagement you guys are now going to see your bills increase by x%" is politically impossible. That leaves government borrowing, which would imply state ownership - perhaps temporary - of TW, I'd have thought.

Oh, and abolish Ofwat and replace it with a proper regulator fit for purpose.

This summarises what I think too (and what I expect).

[s1962a]

matrignano said:

s1962a said:

They can FRO if they want to increase my bills by 40% so that shareholders can get a return on their investment.

Cancel your direct debit

Go on. How will that help? and what solutions do you have for when these shareholders no doubt take non payers to court?

[CraigyMc]

Bonefish Blues said:

matrignano said:

s1962a said:

They can FRO if they want to increase my bills by 40% so that shareholders can get a return on their investment.

Cancel your direct debit

I did that when they took over a year to pony up my £2K+ refund after a leak on the supply side. Even their own Customer Relations said they were a sack of st. I might start getting awfully tardy with my payments.

Their customer relations folk are outsourced, so likely couldn't give a toss which company they are talking about that day.

[CraigyMc]

s1962a said:

matrignano said:

s1962a said:

They can FRO if they want to increase my bills by 40% so that shareholders can get a return on their investment.

Cancel your direct debit

Go on. How will that help? and what solutions do you have for when these shareholders no doubt take non payers to court?

The company has the power to take non payers to court, leading to CCJs.

The shareholders don't.

One nice thing about water is that they aren't legally allowed to turn it off, unlike in some other countries.

[matrignano]

s1962a said:

Go on. How will that help? and what solutions do you have for when these shareholders no doubt take non payers to court?

It won’t help anyone one bit, but it’s one way to express your remonstrations

[s1962a]

CraigyMc said:

Hants PHer said:

In order to fix the problem, i.e. stop the sewage discharges, a very large investment will be needed. The key question is how that will be funded. I'd imagine that further borrowing by Thames Water itself is not feasible, given current gearing (or is it? Anyone know for sure?). TW's major shareholders have already refused to inject more equity funds, AIUI.

So it's down to either TW's customers and/or the British Government. Saying to hard pressed customers "Sorry, but due to previous mismanagement you guys are now going to see your bills increase by x%" is politically impossible. That leaves government borrowing, which would imply state ownership - perhaps temporary - of TW, I'd have thought.

Oh, and abolish Ofwat and replace it with a proper regulator fit for purpose.

This summarises what I think too (and what I expect).

Nationalise it, and put any extra costs on top of our tax take or increase our bills in a specific way. I know that government let projects can be inefficient and bureaucratic, and that it might cost more, but it's better to have that than increasing bills to pay off shareholders and debt. If TW was nationalised and they said your bills are increasing for a year so that we can fix leaks and reduce the amount of sewage we pump into waters, that would still be more palatable than having an increase so that shareholders get an ROI.

[s1962a]

matrignano said:

s1962a said:

Go on. How will that help? and what solutions do you have for when these shareholders no doubt take non payers to court?

It won’t help anyone one bit, but it’s one way to express your remonstrations

The better way is to nationalise it and have a government body take care of it. Inefficient and bureaucratic, sure.

[Bonefish Blues]

CraigyMc said:

Bonefish Blues said:

matrignano said:

s1962a said:

They can FRO if they want to increase my bills by 40% so that shareholders can get a return on their investment.

Cancel your direct debit

I did that when they took over a year to pony up my £2K+ refund after a leak on the supply side. Even their own Customer Relations said they were a sack of st. I might start getting awfully tardy with my payments.

Their customer relations folk are outsourced, so likely couldn't give a toss which company they are talking about that day.

I eventually got a case manager who was Reading based when I started getting formal. She appeared genuinely trying to push it through, and I stopped shouting (metaphorically) at her. A more disjointed organisation I've never seen.

[Evanivitch]

Hants PHer said:

In order to fix the problem, i.e. stop the sewage discharges, a very large investment will be needed.

Depends. One aspect would be installing "smart" water butt's. Pretty straight forward in many cases, and can be used to drastically reduce flooding into the combined sewage system if done properly. Used over winter when people aren't watering gardens it would help. Over summer you've just helped reduce domestic water demand.

Water butt is £50. A smart valve controller could be £100. That's just for houses though, wouldn't include flats, but even if you hit 1 million of their customers (25%) you could be reducing storm flow and drought demand by 150-500 million litres (gard to define period of time). They supply 111 million litres of drinking water per day so it's something.

[CraigyMc]

Bonefish Blues said:

CraigyMc said:

Bonefish Blues said:

matrignano said:

s1962a said:

They can FRO if they want to increase my bills by 40% so that shareholders can get a return on their investment.

Cancel your direct debit

I did that when they took over a year to pony up my £2K+ refund after a leak on the supply side. Even their own Customer Relations said they were a sack of st. I might start getting awfully tardy with my payments.

Their customer relations folk are outsourced, so likely couldn't give a toss which company they are talking about that day.

I eventually got a case manager who was Reading based when I started getting formal. She appeared genuinely trying to push it through, and I stopped shouting (metaphorically) at her. A more disjointed organisation I've never seen.

That's where I've been, years ago, in a consulting capacity, clearwater court. The majority of the people I met there aren't Thames Water staff, they are external consultants and contractors.

Thames Water had at the time a very odd way of purchasing IT stuff. Maybe they still do.
Basically they break the system down into each component (server, services, storage, DB, ERP, backup, monitoring, networks etc) then buy the cheapest of each category, and hope that the bits work together. Of course, integration costs when you do something like that wind up as more than the total cost of the components. This was on their ERP solution (SAP) so may have all changed by now, but I'd be really surprised if they've bothered even though the kit is likely out of support. It's how they wound up with an itanium system running DB2 SAP under linux with infosys subbing out all the integration work since they had no skills in the weird combinations at play.

Predictably, if half-worked compared to a cohesive solution, and the only reason it wasn't thrown out completely is that there's no impetus to do things properly since they are a monopoly anyway; nobody's getting fired over a failed project.

It effectively carried over the worst of government work (that there's no penalty for failure or extra benefit to doing a great job) while paying out loads to private firms for that bad work.

UK government has no clue how to negotiate with commercial entities to ensure the right outcomes -- I've seen nothing outside of defence to suggest that it works.

[Hants PHer]

Evanivitch said:

Hants PHer said:

In order to fix the problem, i.e. stop the sewage discharges, a very large investment will be needed.

Depends. One aspect would be installing "smart" water butt's. Pretty straight forward in many cases, and can be used to drastically reduce flooding into the combined sewage system if done properly. Used over winter when people aren't watering gardens it would help. Over summer you've just helped reduce domestic water demand.

Water butt is £50. A smart valve controller could be £100. That's just for houses though, wouldn't include flats, but even if you hit 1 million of their customers (25%) you could be reducing storm flow and drought demand by 150-500 million litres (gard to define period of time). They supply 111 million litres of drinking water per day so it's something.

Seems like a sensible idea; did I read that houses are built with large (rain) water tanks as part of their construction? Might have been Belgium, perhaps.
It strikes me that having vast quantities of rainwater that's 1) not stored and 2) creates overflow and sewage discharge is something that needs addressing, especially if our climate gets more, erm, Mediterranean.

[borcy]

Evanivitch said:

Hants PHer said:

In order to fix the problem, i.e. stop the sewage discharges, a very large investment will be needed.

Depends. One aspect would be installing "smart" water butt's. Pretty straight forward in many cases, and can be used to drastically reduce flooding into the combined sewage system if done properly. Used over winter when people aren't watering gardens it would help. Over summer you've just helped reduce domestic water demand.

Water butt is £50. A smart valve controller could be £100. That's just for houses though, wouldn't include flats, but even if you hit 1 million of their customers (25%) you could be reducing storm flow and drought demand by 150-500 million litres (gard to define period of time). They supply 111 million litres of drinking water per day so it's something.

Would it save that much, 200L butt across 1m homes doesn't seem that much.
I suppose its low cost, even if you gave the water butts away.

[borcy]

Hants PHer said:

Seems like a sensible idea; did I read that houses are built with large (rain) water tanks as part of their construction? Might have been Belgium, perhaps.
It strikes me that having vast quantities of rainwater that's 1) not stored and 2) creates overflow and sewage discharge is something that needs addressing, especially if our climate gets more, erm, Mediterranean.

I think it's Israel.

[Ashfordian]

Hants PHer said:

In order to fix the problem, i.e. stop the sewage discharges, a very large investment will be needed. The key question is how that will be funded. I'd imagine that further borrowing by Thames Water itself is not feasible, given current gearing (or is it? Anyone know for sure?). TW's major shareholders have already refused to inject more equity funds, AIUI.

So it's down to either TW's customers and/or the British Government. Saying to hard pressed customers "Sorry, but due to previous mismanagement you guys are now going to see your bills increase by x%" is politically impossible. That leaves government borrowing, which would imply state ownership - perhaps temporary - of TW, I'd have thought.

Oh, and abolish Ofwat and replace it with a proper regulator fit for purpose.

Thames Water is currently worth £7.6bn to USS alone. The current shareholders are playing a game of brinksmanship with the regulator/Government with regards to the funding. OFWAT needs to call their bluff, which they finally seem to be doing.

If it then goes bust, the shareholders will get nothing, and the debtors will get pennies in the pound. One thing OFWAT needs to make sure of is there is no shenanigans around the LTT by the investors. After this, you'll have a much healthier company, that is run by the Government after nationalisation.

[juice]

Hants PHer said:

Seems like a sensible idea; did I read that houses are built with large (rain) water tanks as part of their construction? Might have been Belgium, perhaps.
It strikes me that having vast quantities of rainwater that's 1) not stored and 2) creates overflow and sewage discharge is something that needs addressing, especially if our climate gets more, erm, Mediterranean.

Every house in Bermuda has rain catchment,
There are a few Aquifers (lenses) and RO but ultimately you use what you catch. Unless there's a Hurricane when you use tennis balls to block the inlets as Hurricane rain is brackish.

I am amazed that this is not used in the UK given the amount of rain we receive.

https://www.ft.com/content/0088b54b-3e37-4d2f-828a...

[Southerner]

Is it not the case that essentially every water company in the country is sitting on infrastructure that is absolutely shot to sh*t, excuse the pun, and hoping that Gvmnt just keeps on letting them casually dump more and more sewage into rivers and seas in order to hide the problem? A strategy which is successful because Downing St absolutely doesn’t want to admit what a total disgrace such an essential part of the national infrastructure is?

I don’t condone the way that Thames Water has been very obviously mismanaged, but is it not clear that the entire national system needs £bns sunk into it for a total rebuild, and that isn’t money that any private owner is likely to be putting up, a d so the Gvmnt are quite happy letting the whole show limp and stagger on so that they can avoid funding it themselves. I’d suggest the authorities are every bit as guilty here as TW’s owners.

[119]

Problem is, all these new housing estates are built on vast areas of land, so, we have an increase in rain with nowhere for it to go naturally.

Where we used to live, a new estate was built on land that was acting as a flood plain, and over the last year, the local pub has flooded twice apparently.

Too much of a coincidence i would say.