Last Saturday was the 30th anniversary of water privatisation - and for the first time in 30 years, the privatised water companies are under serious pressure.
 
In the last week, we’ve taken this fight to the next level – thank you for making this happen!
 
Many of you organised demonstrations at English water company headquarters on Saturday – calling for public ownership on the streets!

• Southern Water was the largest event (not surprising after the recent scandal of them lying for seven years about pouring raw sewage into the rivers). There were chants of ‘We Own It!’ and a large number of angry citizens – check out the coverage on ITV.
• At Thames Water, the We Own It team and friends delivered a ‘final notice’ telling the company their time is up – watch the video.
• And we hit the local papers hard, with media coverage like we’ve never had before in Worthing, Bradford, Reading and loads more, thanks to many of you who are funding our new press officer Chris to get your message out.

Hundreds of you put forward your ideas for the future of water in public hands

• The exciting new People’s Plan for Water, launched yesterday, is full of your suggestions, spelling out what we could deliver with publicly owned water companies, working for people and planet, not profit.
• Check out our Open Democracy article, also published yesterday which puts forward a vision for how public ownership of water will help us tackle the climate crisis.

Thousands of you have written to your MP asking them to support public ownership of water

• 60 of them have signed the Early Day Motion in support.
• At our parliamentary event yesterday launching the People’s Plan we got support from Labour, SNP and Greens.
• Scottish MPs celebrated the brilliant publicly owned Scottish Water! It's a great example for England to copy.
• John McDonnell, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Deidre Brock and Caroline Lucas all told us why they are backing the campaign.
• We know MPs are being lobbied by the water industry so we gave each of the English MPs a regionalised briefing telling them exactly how their privatised water company is failing people in their area.

This fight is just beginning. We know what we want. We know how to achieve it. We know that 83% of us believe water belongs in public hands and we can look to Scotland and Paris to show that it’s possible.

And we're already making an impact. Even under a Tory government, your campaigning has forced Ofwat to tighten up regulations for water companies.
 
If you haven’t yet:

• Set up a £5 a month donation so we can keep running this campaign – we’re up against some serious vested interests in the water industry who are working hard to stop us – we need YOU on our side!
• Let us know when your water company fails – we can help you take action to get in your local press.
• And of course, please sign and share the petition for public ownership of water!

THANK YOU for putting public ownership of water on the table for the first time in 30 years!!!