Thames Water hit with largest-ever fine issued by regulator Ofwat
https://news.sky.com/story/thames-water-hit-with-largest-ever-fine-issued-by-regulator-ofwat-13375757
Posted by sjw_7
Thames Water hit with largest-ever fine issued by regulator Ofwat
https://news.sky.com/story/thames-water-hit-with-largest-ever-fine-issued-by-regulator-ofwat-13375757
Posted by sjw_7
35 Comments
This will only mean one thing – higher bills for users.
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We bail them out, we fine them, they ask for a bailout…
In other news, Thames Water customers were hit with the largest-ever water bill increase today
Should be directly out of there bonuses that the bail out money paid for
Can someone please tell me what the chocolate teapot of a regulator has been doing with Thames Water and all the other unlawful water companies for the last 20 years?
Putting my bill up from £40 to £128 a month when I don’t take baths only showers I don’t water the garden etc. What a joke of a company run my greedy lazy people.
Hopefully they will look to recover dividends that were wrongly paid.
Also when are they going to hold the Execs accountable?
If only the regulator OFWAT did their job sooner and actually regulated, we wouldn’t have got to this point where literal poo has been in our rivers for close to a decade.
Not to say the companies themselves aren’t to blame too but what is the point of OFWAT if we end up in these situations anyway. They’re not even protecting us from large price rises in the next few years.
Yet did they CEO’s not get a ridiculous amount of bonuses.
> Of the total fine, £104.5m – 9% of Thames Water’s turnover – has been levied for breaches of wastewater rules. It’s just below the maximum 10% of turnover Ofwat could have applied.
Another £18.2m penalty will be paid for breaches of dividend payment rules.
Won’t that exacerbate the company’s deteriorating position further?
Who gets the money from the fines and where does it end up.?
Not good enough – hopefully some prison sentences will follow this.
Is it enough to bankrupt them?
If not, it’s too little.
Water is essential for life and in no way should be run for profit. Remove all their licences now.
If the government bail this company out it will encourage all the other providers across the country to keep loading debt in the same way. Bankrupt practices must have consequences.
Ofwat spends so much of its time dealing with Thames Water it ought to rename itself Oftwat.
even if it doesnt result in higher bills, i’m skeptical but lets say; then i bet your arse it’ll be “we cannot undertake large capital investments in infrastructure as onerous fines and legislation have made our share and bond issues unattractive to the market” for the next couple of decades.
Public control of essential services is the only way.
I mean it’s good, but they were 19 billion in debt. They are now 19.1 billion in debt. Can someone explain how they are still a viable company? They will never get rid of that debt. It’s over a grand per customer which is about 2 years bills.
Chances this was a calculated risk and they’re fine with the outcome cuz it still meant more profit than doing what they should have done?
Privatising water was one of the dumbest policy decisions ever.
Thames Water are a terrible service provider, yet it’s not like I can switch.
Time for nationalisation
So labour were just posturing when they were boasting about jail terms for the fat cats?
Just nationalise them, instead of fining them a monetary amount the government should instead issue the fine as equity, for example the fine is 5% ownership for this infraction, next time it will be another 5%, eventually if the water companies continue to break the law they will find themselves in 100% state ownership without any shareholder compensation.
The shareholders are taking this risk when investing in water companies which refuse to obey the law, this risk will also drive the share price down significantly, making nationalisation by share purchases cheaper for the state if it chooses to do so.
I mean they own the public 19bilions … I think 100milions in fine split between the board of investor is probably 3month holiday cancel for them… I was hoping for jail time really those ppl have literaly bleed and mock the british peoples and we are just asking them to pay a small feese for it
>These fines were not factored into Thames Water’s financial planning for the next five years. The company’s chief executive, Chris Weston, told a recent sitting of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs select committee that Thames Water’s future was dependent on Ofwat being lenient with fines.
Ah good ol thinly veiled attempts at extortion
“A Thames Water spokesperson said: ‘We take our responsibility towards the environment very seriously’. “
Karoline Leavitt doing a spot of moonlighting, I see.
What is going to happen is they will get loan even more and pay their shareholders until company is bankrupt. Once we want to try to make it public, it will cost more than we sold it due to huge debt.
Thames Water dividends since privatisation: £7.2 billion
Thames Water increase in net debt since privatisation: £14.3 billion
The shareholders should be put in prison for defrauding the taxpayer.
Thames Water is part of a group of companies, known as the Kemble Water Group, and is privately owned by a mix of people and businesses. The largest shareholder as of July 2023 is the **Canadian pension fund Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (Omers)** – about 32 per cent.
NO planned investment just profit
Pointless – I’ll be paying the fine through higher bills.
I’m involved in the ‘water testing river thames’ project where we monitor the river upstream and downstream of various outfalls. Thames Water are only required by the EA to monitor for a couple of elements however we check for Ecoli as well and the results are terrible for all river users, both human and not.
Thames Water have been pouring partially untreated effluent in to the Thames for decades as part of their business plan. I used to work on the river in the 90’s and remember the terrible smell and toilet paper froth back then.
EA & ofwat are at best ineffective and at worse complicit.
Services such as water need to be taken back in to public hands so that we have someone accountable and not a bunch of private equity vultures.
They were given a £3bn bailout and then fined £104m. I’d say they’ve won.
Listening to their rebuttal, asking for leinancy in the fines as it will hamper their effort to fix years of poor investment as if the billions in cost they mention has come of nowhere with a cricket bat and smashed their knees in, is wild.
Fines are pointless. The penalty for wrongdoing should be an executive bonus cap. That would put the decision makers in the frame for punishment and properly incentivise correct conduct.
Waste of time, customers and taxpayers will have to bail it out anyway.
These people need to be in prison, seize all their assets as proceeds of crime and nationalise the fucking thing.
Prison would be much better and would actually work as a deterrent.