Latest news with #water companies
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
‘Less reorganising, more doing': landmark report alone won't fix broken water sector
It started with sewage. Few environmental crises evoke such visceral public anger as pumping poo into waterways, but for years, that is exactly what water companies in England and Wales have done in large volumes. Their failure to build infrastructure, plug leaks and protect nature has infuriated customers who at the same time have struggled with soaring water bills. It has also shocked European neighbours whose publicly owned water companies keep things far cleaner. Critics say the increasingly sorry state of the UK's waterways is the result of mismanagement and underinvestment by debt-ridden water companies who were allowed to run wild by toothless regulators. The problem, as they see it, is the environmental conundrum at the heart of the modern consumer paradigm: public goods such as healthy rivers and clean beaches do not appear on company balance sheets. Why should corporations – which have a duty to create value for their shareholders – look after public goods? And if governments won't force them to, should we really expect them to look after the environment? In this case, after a landmark report into the troubled sector on Monday, the government announced it would combine the powers of four water industry watchdogs – which had competing economic and environmental aims – into one entity with oversight for the sector. It promised 'strong ministerial directives' and an end to its light touch approach. 'A single, powerful regulator responsible for the entire water sector will stand firmly on the side of customers, investors and the environment, and prevent the abuses of the past,' said Steve Reed, the UK environment secretary. The adopted proposal is just one of 88 recommendations from a report by an independent water commission– the bulk of which the government will consider over the summer – and the response from environmental experts has so far been muted. Hannah Cloke, a hydrologist at the University of Reading, said water industry reforms were 'long overdue and badly needed' but warned against spending years setting up new structures while rivers stay polluted and reservoirs run dry. 'The real challenge isn't designing better systems on paper – it's getting companies to actually fix leaking pipes, stop dumping sewage, and build the infrastructure we need,' she said. 'Less reorganising, more doing.' The report contains a number of recommendations that could help improve water quality and manage its supply, such as better third-party monitoring, new infrastructure standards, compulsory smart meters and a ban on wet wipes with plastic. It considers drawing from new EU rules to make polluters pay for the extra treatments needed to clean up emerging micropollutants, which could eventually include long-lasting Pfas and microplastics. The report also calls for the updating of existing environmental laws, in addition to overhauling the regulators. The proposed 'streamlining' includes setting a new long-term target for the health of water bodies in England and Wales – though the move might tempt ministers to lower ambition, given that the existing targets are set to be missed. Mark Lloyd, chief executive of the Rivers Trust, said it was understandable that 'many people will have wanted this report to go further' but that he believed the recommendations, if implemented, would lead to a 'dramatic improvement' in the water environment and more cost-effective delivery. Most of all, though, the report has also come under fire for what it has left out. Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of the Green party, compared the proposed regulatory changes to 'rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic'. 'Not only that, but the majority of the public are going to be expected to pay more in bills, as we watch the industry continue to sink under the failed model of privatisation,' he said. 'The government deliberately left out the option of public ownership from the review, but that's the only real way to get the water industry to clean up its act.' That outcome isn't guaranteed. When the water companies were privatised in 1989, the UK was regarded as 'the dirty man of Europe'. A trip to its beaches shows it has come full-circle.
BBC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Government promises to halve sewage pollution in next five years
The UK government has promised to cut sewage pollution from water companies in half by pledge, made by Environment Secretary Steve Reed, comes as a report looking into how water companies in England and Wales work has been independent report looked at things like increased sewage spills and higher water bills for has made a number of recommendations to change how water companies in England and Wales work in the future. What has the government announced? The pledge to halve sewage spills by 2030 relates to 2024 levels, which was a record year for the duration of spills. Mr Reed said: "Families have watched their local rivers, coastlines and lakes suffer from record levels of pollution."My pledge to you: the Government will halve sewage pollution from water companies by the end of the decade."Sewage is the waste that comes from our toilets, baths, showers, and goes through a network of pipes and ends up in a sewage treatment works. This is where the wastewater is cleaned, so it can safely go back into our rivers and if it's raining a lot, sewage treatment works can become overwhelmed with wastewater and this happens, water companies have permission to release some raw sewage - that's sewage that hasn't been treated yet - back into rivers and year, sewage was released into England's rivers and seas for 3.6 million hours in total, and the number of recorded spills stood at around 450, Environment Minister Steve Reed said the announcement marks the first time ministers have set a clear target on reducing sewage pollution. The Government also announced plans for £104 billion to be invested into upgrading damaged pipes and building new treatment works. However, other political parties have criticised the plans and say that more needs to done to stop water bills from rising. Conservative shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins said: "Labour came to power with big promises to reform the water system, but so far, they have simply copied previous Conservative government policy and have done nothing to stop water bill rises."Labour must be transparent about where the £104 billion investment is coming from as some will come through customer bill rises," Ms Atkins added. What has the report recommended? An increasing number of sewage spillages and the rising cost of water bills led to the investigation by the independent Water report has made 88 recommendations to change the water industry in England and a result of the report, the government has announced plans to close water regulator is a way of keeping water companies in check to make sure they deliver for billpayers and the the government says Ofwat have not done enough to hold water companies to Secretary Steve Reed, says this move will end the "complexity" that is hurting report suggests having a single water regulator in England and a single water regulator in report also warns people that water bills might have to rise in the future and recommends the introduction of compulsory smart would work in a similar way to how energy meters currently work, where people would be charged for the water they use rather than paying a flat fee. What has the reaction to the report been? In response to the news, the Liberal Democrats have said they support the Government's decision to scrap the current water spokesperson Tim Farron said: "This is a big win for the Liberal Democrats who have led the campaign against the sewage scandal for years. "Since 2022 we have called for Ofwat to be replaced with a tougher regulator, now finally the government appears to have listened."However, some campaigners have said the report and recommendations don't go far Action said the Independent Water Commission "blinked" when it had a "once-in-a-generation" chance to make major to its chief executive James Wallace, the report merely offers "the illusion of change, not real change."The Consumer Council for Water (CCW) added the industry has "drained" the public's trust because of service failures and poor environmental performance.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
High water bills, filthy rivers – and now drought. This is England's great artificial water crisis of 2025
For a rich and fairly stable country, we are staggeringly ill-prepared for climate shocks. We respond to predictable crises as if we had had no warning. Lessons from previous disasters go unlearned, mistakes are recycled, failures lodged so deeply that they come to define the system. This is not because of a deficiency in the national character, but because of a deficiency in the ideology of government: an elite belief, shared by scarcely any citizens, that public intervention should be used only when all other measures have failed. Until that point, our problems should be addressed by the private sector. As drought rolls across the country once again, England's privatised water system guarantees an irrational response. Nothing undermines climate resilience in this country as much as the private ownership of our water system, and nothing reveals the drought of political ambition like the refusal to renationalise it. Once again we find ourselves confronting simultaneously both the climate crisis and the political crisis. Climate breakdown is the result of a global failure to address the power of private capital. Labour's response to its impacts reflects the same timidity. As successive governments have stood and watched, we have been comprehensively rinsed by the water companies. The current administration seems prepared to go to any lengths not to break this pattern. Margaret Thatcher promised that water privatisation would deliver higher investment. But a detailed analysis by the public service union Unison found that, between 1990 and 2023, there was no net investment at all. 'Investors' spent £3.6bn buying shares in 1989 and 1990, but by March 2023 total shareholder equity across the water sector amounted to £3.4bn. In real terms (taking inflation into account), that means a 60% reduction in shareholder capital. Over that period, shareholders managed to extract £77.6bn (in 2023 prices) in dividends from the water companies. Add this to the withdrawal of equity, and you discover that they have squeezed £82.4bn out of public assets. Much of this money was obtained through loading the companies with debt. Instead of borrowing to pay for infrastructure improvement, water companies borrowed to pay for dividends. They knew that if the enterprise one day became insolvent as a result, it would be someone else's problem. Ultimately, as we now discover in the case of Thames Water, it becomes our problem. Just as the water companies dump their sewage in the rivers, they have also dumped their liabilities on the public. The country becomes their dustbin. For 36 years, these companies have acted as dispensers of free money to their owners, most of which are foreign, some of which are foreign states. In fact, the only government not permitted to own England's water supply is the UK's. They must see us as total suckers, giving away our national infrastructure, land and assets … for less than nothing. Any investments have been funded not by shareholders but by their customers, through our water bills. These rose in the same period by 360%, more than twice the general rate of inflation. The rise has since accelerated. Every year, we pay £2.3bn more for our water and sewerage bills than we would if the suppliers were publicly owned, according to research by the University of Greenwich. High bills, impossible debts, filthy rivers, minimal investment and no resilience: that is the gift of privatisation. One of the results of this asset-stripping model is that leakage rates remain disgracefully high. While the hosepipe bans now being introduced around the nation are likely to save between 3% and 7% of the water we would otherwise use, 19% of the water piped through the network is lost through leakage. Compare this with the publicly owned Dutch system, which loses 4%. For the same reason, no major reservoir has been completed here since 1992. Demand management has been just as hopeless, with the result that, without further action, water demand will exceed supply by 2034. Given that their profits from metered customers depend on the amount we use, the water companies have a powerful incentive not to address the problem. Instead, as supplies become critically low, they insist that they must be allowed to extract even more from our rivers and aquifers, with dire impacts on wildlife and water quality. For similar reasons, they resist imposing hosepipe bans until the last possible moment. It seems crazy that this decision should be left to the water companies, with their perverse incentives and conflicts of interest, rather than being taken by public bodies; but this is yet another outcome of the public-bad, private-good elite ideology. Even senior Tory MPs expressed frustration that government could not simply decide what needed to be done; but that's the system they built, working as designed. As for the regulators, they too are useless by design. Ofwat, which is meant to protect the public interest, has succumbed to full-scale regulatory capture, as senior staff circulate between the water companies and the agency supposed to hold them to account. The Environment Agency, chronically underfunded and demotivated, almost halved its water use inspections in the five years to 2023: a classic example of deregulation by stealth. The rules might remain on the statute book, but without monitoring and enforcement they might as well have been deleted. Throughout its history, water privatisation in the UK has been deeply unpopular. In 1986, a year after Thatcher proposed the policy, a poll showed 71% opposed and only 21% in favour. Since then, opposition has only hardened: a poll a year ago revealed that only 8% of people believed water should still be run by the private sector, while 82% wanted to see it renationalised. But two months later, the government ruled this out. Why? Because, according to the environment secretary, Steve Reed, it would cost too much. Really? A series of analyses show that the government could renationalise these companies for next to nothing, not least because their real value is less than zero. There would be some administrative costs, but these are likely to be far smaller than the annual expense of sustaining the current system. It's a simple test: does the government operate in the interests of the country, or in the interests of private capital? This shouldn't be a difficult choice for Labour to make, yet, as with so many such tests, it flunks it. Why? Because it is terrified of any measure that might alienate even the most parasitic and extractive forms of capital. Strangely, however, it seems to have no qualms about alienating the rest of us. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist On Tuesday 16 September, join George Monbiot, Mikaela Loach and other special guests discussing the forces driving climate denialism, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at
BBC News
01-07-2025
- Climate
- BBC News
UK dry weather 2025: Will there be a drought where I live?
If you live in north-west England or Yorkshire, you are already in an official state of drought, the Environment Agency says, and people living in other English regions could follow if the dry weather of us in eastern Scotland or parts of Wales are also seeing low water levels, according to water companies can affect different aspects of our lives and the environment. It can make it harder for farmers to grow crops, do harm to nature and mean you have to change how you use how is your area doing and how close are you to a drought? Here's a look at what's happening around the country, including our rain, rivers and reservoirs. One of the driest springs on record There is no single definition of drought or water scarcity - the measure in Scotland - but a long period of low rainfall is it rained less than normal across almost all of the UK between March and May, the UK's sixth driest spring since records began in there has been less moisture to top up our rivers, reservoirs and rocks below the ground. If that lack of rainfall continues for a long time, it can strain the water supplies that serve our homes and businesses. In June there was slightly more rainfall than average for the UK overall, but with a big difference between east and west. Parts of Northern Ireland, western Scotland, Wales and south-west England saw wetter conditions than usual. But most of central and eastern England and Scotland saw dry weather forecasts suggest drier than average conditions through much of July and possibly August would further increase the risk of drought. Drier rivers for most of the UK Monitors in rivers show us how they are flowing. At the end of May these river flows were below normal for about three-quarters of monitored sites around the one in five experienced "exceptionally low" flows. Provisional June data doesn't look much flows at the end of last month were about the same as - or even below - previous drought years of 1976, 2011, 2018 and 2022 for many eastern, central and southern regions, said Lucy Barker, hydrologist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Exceptionally low reservoirs in north England Reservoirs are a crucial part of water supplies in northern England, Scotland and the end of May, England's reservoirs were at their lowest combined levels for the time of year in records going back more than 30 levels in the North East and North West were exceptionally low - an important factor for drought being declared in Yorkshire and the North main reason for this is, of course, the lack of rain, but a small number reservoirs can be affected by other factors. Normally at this time of year, Scottish reservoirs are 85% full. Last week they were at 79%, according to Scottish Water. They are even lower in eastern Wales, most are around normal, although the reservoirs serving Mid and South Ceredigion in west Wales are below average, Welsh Water levels are about average in Northern Ireland, according to NI Water. A more mixed picture underground Much of south-east England relies more heavily on groundwater than originates as rainfall and is naturally stored beneath the surface in the pore spaces and fractures in rocks. Rocks that store lots of groundwater are called accounts for a third of England's water supply, though this is much higher in the south and is down to the UK's varied geology, which affects how much water can be stored in the can flow more quickly through some rock types than others, sometimes taking years to respond to current is the case for parts of south and east England, which is why these regions are currently closer to normal. These groundwater stores "respond more slowly to changes in the climate than rivers which is why they provide a useful buffer during periods of drought," said Prof Alan MacDonald of the British Geological is why groundwater droughts in the South generally take a longer time to develop but can be longer-lasting if they do occur. What are the consequences of the dry weather? People and nature are already feeling the effects."It's quite shocking that we are still only [in early] July," Rachel Hallos, deputy director of the National Farmers' Union, told BBC News."It's like it's the end of August when you look at the ground."With this little rain, farmers have had to get water onto their crops using irrigation. That has made things more expensive for them and means there is even less water to go is widespread concern about the months ahead, Mrs Hallos added."What am I going to have to harvest? What am I going to have to feed my livestock over winter?"And then there is the impact on wildlife. A spokesman from the bird protection charity RSPB said that a big challenge has been making sure enough water is getting to key wetland habitats so that birds have safe places to nest."We need to be thinking about making our sites more resilient to climate change, as these periods of prolonged dry weather become the norm."And it's not just water-loving birds that are having a hard time. Even in our gardens, common visitors like blackbirds can struggle to find worms and insects on our parched lawns, the RSPB says. Is climate change to blame? Droughts are complex phenomena, driven by a mix of natural and human Met Office expects the UK to experience drier summers on average in future as the world warms, though there has been no clear trend so rising temperatures can play a more fundamental role by sapping moisture from the soil via evaporation."A warmer atmosphere is thirstier for moisture and this can mean water in the soil, rivers and reservoirs are depleted more effectively, leading to more rapidly onsetting droughts, heatwaves and wildfires," said Richard Allan, professor of climate science at the University of there are other factors that determine whether dry conditions lead to water shortages, including how we use part of plans to address water shortages, the government is planning nine new reservoirs for England by 2050, in addition to one under construction at Havant Thicket in the Environment Agency has warned that measures to tackle water leaks and control water demand - potentially including hosepipe bans and more smart meters - may be needed in England companies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also said they were taking steps to secure future supplies. Additional reporting by Dan Wainwright and Christine Jeavans Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC's Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.
