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    Water companies fined just £2 for rule breaking despite record sewage
    United Kingdom

    Water companies fined just £2 for rule breaking despite record sewage

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    9 Comments

    2. UnderwaterOverground on

      In case you were worried, you can rest soundly knowing this £2 will be split amongst all bill payers evenly.

    3. AbyssalTzhaar on

      Poor things, I’ll ring up and ask to add an extra 2 quid onto my bill for them.

      I know how much they’re struggling with the whole destroying our water/dumping thing.

    4. NEUROTICTechPriest on

      Pumping the sewage directly into the Water Companies Executives / Shareholders homes would get them to change their attitude pretty quickly.

      When empty of course and as a legitimate means of protest.

    5. lapayne82 on

      Burying the lead a bit arnt they, they’re paying out millions in other forms rather than just fines, I’m sure they did that because if they fined too much then some other regulatory mechanism kicks in to place they are keen to avoid (likes losing their license to operate or forced nationalisation)

    6. liquidio on

      Because the truth is that the vast majority of sewage releases are perfectly legal.

      They come from combined sewage outflows – a designed feature of the parts of the system where storm water and foul water drains are combined. It is there to stop the foul water backing up into homes and businesses when rain water fills up the system. It mostly happens automatically, like the overflow drain in a bath.

      These systems were mostly built when the water system was in public ownership in the early and mid 20th Century. The modern private water companies did not build any new ones, the practice was stopped in the late 60s, well before privatisation.

      The only reason it has become such a hot-button topic now is that the coalition government and OFWAT asked the water companies to install monitoring of CSOs, which had never previously existed.

      Note that the private water companies in England reached full monitoring compliance much quicker than the publicly owned companies in Scotland or NI, neither of which is near 100% several years on.

      Conflating CSO releases with illegal activity is a misrepresentation of how the system works. There are occasionally illegal releases where parts of the processing system breaks down unexpectedly and needs to be fixed, but that is a tiny minority of releases.

    7. crh23 on

      The fines (2x£1) are since the water companies agreed to alternative penalties, which are around directly compensating affected customers. Neither of these two fines was for environmental issues.

      Regarding the environmental issues: Ofwat have announced £168m in fines for failure to maintain network for three companies (earlier this year), but haven’t finalised this yet. I would expect that these will also be disbursed directly to customers, probably through bill reductions.

      What Ofwat have to say on the matter.
      >An spokesperson said: “Fines are just one possible outcome of our enforcement action, we also use our powers to secure other financial and non-financial commitments from companies to secure better outcomes for customers, including redress.
      >
      “Since 2021, such enforcement action has resulted in over £50m being returned to customers and companies committing to spend over £150m of additional money to drive further service improvements.”

      Clearly the water companies need to do better, and clearly Ofwat have not done enough to keep them in check, but I don’t think that holding up the £2 figure is meaningful.

    8. PuzzledFortune on

      Sure are a lot of apologists for the water companies in this thread.

      When they were privatised we were told that the efficiency of private enterprise would improve the service. We didn’t get that, but the shareholders have been having a great time. Of course there issues due to Victorian infrastructure and climate change but the water companies were supposed to deal with that. They chose instead to pay dividends and put up prices.