Water firms acting like ‘criminal gangs’ dumping 10,000 hours’ worth of sewage each month on dry days
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/water-firms-acting-like-criminal-gangs-dumping-10-000-hours-worth-of-sewage-each-5HjdW7x_2/
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
25 Comments
We need to start putting board members in prison for this along with banning any shareholder payouts. That will make them clean up their act pretty quickly
Can we just admit privatisation is a failure and put an end to it? The only people benefitting is the people in charge, ruining our country in the process
This is a clever article. It measures water in “hours” which is of course absolutely meaningless to normal people (like me). I have absolutely no idea if it is a lot or a little, but is clearly aimed to get people riled up.
I just started watching Dirty Business last night, it does a great job of showing what is meant by underinvestment.
This really is the biggest scandal of our time, it dwarfs anything else. But you know, we can’t blame faceless foreign investors now can we, where would we put the flags?
You’d think Westminster might have something to say about this
Privatisation is not the issue, ministers chumming with their mates to eliminate control is the scandal and people need to be held accountable and follow due course. But unfortunately this model is rampant everywhere.
Water just isn’t the business to be squeezing profits from.
You have literally 100% market capitalisation, pretty much every house is hooked up or receives it because it’s literally what we need to not die.
Skipping steps and fucking up our water is literally harming themselves too.
Once it’s all gone are they gonna drink money?
I wonder how many senior civil servants profited from this. Like governments come and go, but the people that advise them are there the whole time right? Just seems weird that issues like this go unnoticed for so long and I always get troubled when I see these senior people moving out of the service and into private consultancy firms for those they were responsible for keeping tabs on.
Is this one of those things where it’s the easiest thing to do instead of spending billions, and the reason the government won’t take control because it’s either this or they take control and spend billions trying to fix it or have to find alternative solutions and they rather a private company do it than them having to do it and get the bad press or spend billions to put in place correct procedures
I have no idea what I’m talking about just throwing out guesses because the obvious thing to do is for water to be nationalised but then why aren’t they doing it? Must be a reason behind it
OFWAT is the real problem here. The government had the perfect set up really, can set the rules, limit profit these companies can make and fine them heavily if the dont achieve but OFWAT only focused on price for the customer not actually maintaining and increasing the infrastructure as population increases
OFWAT tells the businesses what they are allowed to spend their money on and will knock back key projects like new treatment because it would mean increasing customer prices to deliver but what could have been done 15 years ago for £1 million will now cost 3x that and its already to late that infrastructure was needed 10 years ago. These things dont appear overnight and takes years of planning
Yes that’s the way it is and will be.
Ofwat isn’t fit for purpose unless that purpose it inept spineless enabler?
But remember, we can’t nationalise water because a report commissioned by water companies said it will be too expensive.
Nationalising the water companies should have been the first act this Labour government should have done when they came into power; instead they went after pensioners winter fuel instead.
Im not defending what the water industry does, but whoever wrote the article failed their GCSE geography. Just because it hasn’t rained, doesn’t mean the ground water stops. Ground water ingress into the drainage system triggers a fuck load of CSOs to trigger.
Starmer needs to continue on his current roll of actually doing popular things (for once) and just nationalise the every living f*** out of them tomorrow. Just do it, bank the political capital and we all move on with our lives.
The comparison to criminal gangs is spot on, because this is deliberate, profit-driven vandalism. Privatisation has clearly failed to deliver anything but shareholder returns at the expense of our environment. Until there are real consequences, like personal liability for executives, nothing will change. It’s time to treat this like the national scandal it is.
Just trickle down economics. They take a free resource that literally falls from the sky, sell it to us and take profits. Then pure sewage trickles back into our waterways increasing their profits!
The thing that gets me with the modern UK is that with the growth in population meaning more customers and money than ever before for providers such as water companies, they’re all pleading poverty.
So either:
1) These business models are unsustainable. If more customers results in less income, your business is doomed, so get out now and send it back into public ownership.
2) The extra money has been skimmed off for years instead of being invested in building suitable infrastructure so that the business can scale with the growing customer base. In which case, get out now and send it back into public ownership and hope you don’t get prosecuted for anything.
The same applies to local authorities.
How can more paying customers result in less funds to maintain the service you are in the business of providing?
This is rhetorical really. I know the answer.
The government needs to find it’s balls and nationalise water.
Do we all realise that renationalisation would be a return to the norm rather than some drastic shift to the left. Not even the US has a fully privatised water system. It is madness that will never work. At an absolute minimum, water infrastructure should in public hands.
How much is one hour of sewage? If only we had units for such things
How long do we have to see articles like this and complain about it for nothing to happen? It’s just depressing because the solution is right there, obvious to almost everyone but the water companies continue to exist, extract our money, mock us and literally throw shit at us.
Our waterways are dying, our wildlife is dying, people are getting sick, our tourist spots are getting polluted and our bills continue to increase dramatically to ‘fix’ the issue but nothing much is ever really done and we carry on with this humiliation.
Dump it when it rains, dump it when its dry.
Can we just nationalise them, privatisation has failed for water.
This is an area in which the Labour Gov is doing a decent job.
[A new post in Ofwat is a Chief Engineer](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-unveils-biggest-overhaul-to-water-in-a-generation).) who will sit inside the new single water regulator. Their job is to bring back the hands-on checks of water infrastructure Ofwat has failed to provide, ending the days of water firms marking their own homework, resulting in crumbling pipes and unreliable services.
OfWat has got out from under Water Co’s regulatory capture, where it regulated for the benefit of the Water companies and has begun doling serious fines and investigations
[Thames Water Record Fines May 2025:](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgeg5vy9q8eo) Thames Water was hit with a record-breaking **£122.7m in fines** from regulator [Ofwat](https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/ofwat-fines-thames-water-nearly-123m-following-two-investigations-into-the-company/) for serious sewage breaches and inappropriate dividend payments.
* **Bonus Bans for CEOs (Nov 2025):** Following severe pollution incidents, the government banned bonuses for executives at six major water companies, including **Thames Water, Southern Water, and Yorkshire Water**.
* **Southern Water Fines:** Following a £90m fine in 2021 for deliberate sewage dumping, Southern Water continued to face pressure, with CEO Lawrence Gosden’s remuneration scrutinized despite the company’s poor environmental record.
* **South East Water Fine (March 2026):** Ofwat proposed a **£22m fine** against South East Water for repeated, severe supply failures in Kent and Sussex.
* **Severn Trent CEO Pay Controversy:** Despite a £2m fine for sewage spills, Severn Trent CEO Liv Garfield was paid **£3.2m in 2024**, drawing criticism.
* **Yorkshire Water Hidden Pay:** Investigations revealed that Yorkshire Water’s CEO, Nicola Shaw, received £1.3m in undisclosed extra pay via an offshore company despite a ban on bonuses.
Would it be better to renationalise? Well you would have to buy back the shares which is extremely expensive. To take them without recompensation would hurt the shareholders, who are mostly UK and overseas pension companies. The largest is a Canadian pension co. So the tihnking is give the regulator teeth and oversight.
Petty criminals have their assets confiscated as proceeds of crime, it’s time that was extended to crimes commited by companies and their CEOs.
Water companies can dump thousands of gallons of sewage into rivers a day and get government subsidies, but I turf out a quick turd in a play park and I have to pay a fine and sign the register, where’s the justice?!