2 Apr 2026
If you've ever written to your MP asking them to demand the nationalisation of water, you know they often offer different reasons why public ownership won't deliver the improvements we need.
In this blog, we outline and respond to 6 arguments typically advanced against public ownership of our water, including:
- “Tougher regulation will solve the water crisis”
- “Public ownership of water would cost billions of pounds, and take money away from hospitals and schools”
- “It would take many years to unpick the current ownership model, taking time away from fixing the problems people care about”
- “Scottish water is nationalised, but they still face lots of problems”
- “Nationalising now would let shareholders off the hook”
- “Thames Water is under a cash lock-up arrangement, which means they can’t pay out dividends to shareholders”
Send this blog to your MP and anyone you know who needs to understand why we need public ownership of our water now.
1. “... tougher regulation will solve the water crisis…”
-
Regulation of the water sector has utterly failed
-
Fines for pollution are simply factored into business costs for water companies, or delayed long enough that they cease to have an impact.
-
In Feb 2025 - under the Water Special Measures Act - this government banned water bosses’ bonuses and introduced measures to bring criminal charges against persistent offenders. Since then, Thames Water has paid out over £2m in bonuses through a ‘Management Retention Plan’, and not a single chief executive has been charged with an offence - despite water companies accumulating nearly 1200 criminal convictions.
-
In the wake of these measures, sewage pollution in London and the South East hit record levels at the beginning of 2026.
-
The new Water White Paper (published in January 2026) is a gift to privatised water. A new, single regulator will be ripe for corporate capture. A ‘tailored approach’ for each water company and ‘constrained discretion’ offer water companies even more scope to bend and break the rules without consequence.
-
Unsurprisingly, water lobbyist body Water UK have welcomed the new white paper with open arms, especially given that DEFRA chose to shape new legislation around their priorities
2. “... public ownership of water would cost billions of pounds, and take money away from hospitals and schools…”
-
The government does not know how much public ownership of water would cost, because they have not attempted to calculate it.
-
The £100bn figure for nationalisation, which the government has previously quoted, has been widely debunked and was produced in a water-industry-funded report.
-
Research by Common Wealth has revealed that the cost of bringing failing water companies into public ownership could be as little as £0. Because they have extracted more than they have invested and run our water infrastructure into the ground, shareholders do not deserve compensation.
-
Water companies are sought after by investors because they offer a guaranteed income stream from billpayers. If nationalised, this would be a source of income for the Treasury.
3. “...it would take many years to unpick the current ownership model, taking time away from fixing the problems people care about…”
-
Regulation of water is simply a sticking plaster, and a failing one at that. The only effective fix is one that tackles the root cause: privatisation. Anything else is simply kicking the can down the road.
-
There are multiple routes to public ownership of water: via special administration; by removing water company licences when water companies fail to meet their statutory obligations, or by taking shares instead of fines, in response to sewage pollution. It is within the government’s power to assess which of these would be the most time and cost-effective.
-
Last year, this government passed emergency legislation to protect British Steel. It is now on track to be nationalised within weeks. We can and must do the same for water.
4. “...Scottish Water is nationalised, but they still face lots of problems…”
-
On average, the annual water bill in Scotland is £107 cheaper than in England.
-
On average, Scottish Water spends £72 more per household per year on investment in infrastructure.
-
Elsewhere, the customer satisfaction rate for publicly owned Eau de Paris ranges from 90-96%, and the best bathing sites in Europe are all where water is publicly owned.
-
Last year, the Office for Statistics Regulation stated that former Environment Secretary Steve Reed risked misleading the public over his claims that Scotland’s water is more polluted than England’s.
5. “... Nationalising now would let shareholders off the hook…”
-
No, it wouldn’t. Bringing failing water companies into public ownership with little or no compensation for shareholders is an appropriate consequence. This would also make public ownership affordable.
6. “...Thames Water is under a cash lock-up arrangement, which means they can’t pay out dividends to shareholders…”
-
This is true, but they are still on track to make huge profits from the sale of Thames Water
-
In their current negotiations with Ofwat to take formal control of the utility - they are proposing terms which would enable them to sell off the company as soon as 2030
-
As part of these terms, there is an “excess value share mechanism from the proceeds of any eventual sale of the business”, which indicates the anticipation that a huge amount of profit will be extracted from the sale of the company. The proposal’s refusal to name an amount at which this mechanism would be triggered reveals the creditors’ determination to keep as much for themselves as possible.
