The history

Margaret Thatcher privatised water in England and Wales in 1989. She couldn’t get away with it in Scotland so they have publicly-owned Scottish Water. Welsh Water is now a not-for -profit. England has a unique model of privatisation. We didn’t just give private companies a right to operate, we sold off our assets and infrastructure wholesale.

Your private water company has a natural monopoly - you have no choice about the company that you use. This means that the usual market logic - that competition will drive down prices and increase service quality - doesn’t even apply here.

Privatisation is a legalised scam. Water companies have built up a debt mountain of over £72 billion (paid for by us). Meanwhile, shareholders have extracted more than £85 billion. They have taken out more money than they have put in.

Shareholders maximise their profits by diverting money away from infrastructure, into their own pockets. That’s why our water infrastructure is crumbling, despite paying eyewatering bills. Our water bills rose again this April to pay for this mess: Ofwat signed off on water bills increasing 36% between 2025-2030.

As a result of this collapsing infrastructure, our rivers and seas are being treated like open sewers. Especially - but not exclusively - during times of heavy rainfall, water companies companies pour untreated sewage into our waterways, to prevent their outdated systems from becoming overwhelmed.

This is destroying our natural environment, as well as presenting a huge public health risk. The Channel 4 Docudrama Dirty Business recently exposed the devastating consequences of the sewage scandal.

We rely on Ofwat and the under-funded Environment Agency to slap water companies on the wrist when it goes wrong. But regulation has been an abysmal failure - water companies just factor fines into their business costs (that’s when they choose to pay them).

Only a change in ownership will solve the water crisis.

FAQs

Won’t regulation fix the problem?

No. Water companies have huge resources to game the system, and make sure that they can continue to pollute for profit.

• Ofwat (the water regulator) is hopelessly captured - there is a revolving door between people working and Ofwat and people working in the water companies.

• The Environment Agency is underfunded, and it has a financial interest in the companies it regulates.

• Fines given out by Ofwat and the EA are simply pocket change for water companies, factored into business costs

• Water lobbyist body Water UK (which represented private water companies) has welcomed this Labour government’s new regulation plans with open arms. That’s because lobbyists have had a say in shaping it from the beginning, and have done so to make the system even easier to manipulate.

Don’t private companies bring investment?

No – in fact they extract value. Since privatisation, shareholders have taken over £85 billion out of our water system. They have literally invested less than nothing.

Won’t public ownership of water be too expensive?

• The government does not know how much public ownership of water would cost, because they have not attempted to calculate it. It has tied itself in knots trying to justify an estimated figure of £100bn - a figure debunked many times over.

• 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.