Ofwat poised to refuse most suppliers’ requests for big price rises
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/28/water-watchdog-suppliers-price-rises-ofwat-bills-thames-water?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Posted by ClassicFlavour
Ofwat poised to refuse most suppliers’ requests for big price rises
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/28/water-watchdog-suppliers-price-rises-ofwat-bills-thames-water?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Posted by ClassicFlavour
5 Comments
Rather than reduce dividends, the suppliers will just spend less on maintenance without the extra money. Not that much is spent on that already
OFWAT needs to mandate a certain percentage to be spent on maintenance at least until the issues are resolved, the fines need to be higher than the cost of not treating properly as well.
They better, I’ve been watching Thames Water throw money away on a street near us since Thursday whilst trying to fix a leak.
They refuse to pay for parking suspension, net result is that there are several cars parked where they need to dig. The cars are parked legally and Thames Water can’t move them.
So the heavy plant machinery, a JCB at £1,500 a day, a mini digger and two vans with 6 people just sit around.
That was Thursday, Friday more of the same.
Saturday and Sunday no work, it’s obviously not much of an emergency.
Today, one van with two people sitting in it so far, no work yet and there’s at least one car parked where they need to dig.
Easily £10,000 wasted so far, no work done in 4 days but they’ve saved money on the parking permits at least.
The repair team are frustrated but used to it apparently.
The problem is that the cost of water and sewerage is going to have to rise. Our weather is changing as the planet heats, and what we’ve had so far is the entrée. The warm up. The hint.
The current system can neither store enough water to get us through the droughts of 2.5 degrees of warming or handle the torrential downpours it will also bring. We need a big increase in investment to be ready for what is coming in the next 2 decades.
That will require leadership and taking the public with you. That doesn’t work with the Tories increasing climate denialism and it doesn’t work with private water companies whose reputation is in the gutter.
At this point we need nationalisation not for economic reasons, but simply because it’s the only way to get public concensus for the change that needs to happen.
>Ofwat is taking advice from the investment bankers Lazard in a bid to avoid the “worst-case scenario” of Thames being pulled into the special administration regime. Lazard is tasked with finding a sweet spot where Thames Water is attractive for investors, but minimises the pressure on consumer bills, sources said.
If we are going to be spending money to “make it attractive to investors”, just bite the bullet, renationalise it, and amortise the costs over the next 20 years.
Definitely **don’t** spend billions to then sell it to more “investors” to extract maximum dividends from – if it’s attractive to investors, it should also be attractive to the government as a self-supporting source of income.