Streams of Sewage - a Failure of Privatisation

Water companies have found a way to make it seem like they're treating more sewage while actually dumping it into our rivers. They call it "flow trimming." By diverting sewage away from treatment plants, they save money, but our rivers suffer. Like VW’s “defeat” software to mask diesel engine emissions – it’s easier to fake good performance than actually deliver it.

This scheme benefits shareholders, over 70% of which are foreign entities. Since privatisation, these shareholders who have pocketed £78bn in dividends , whilst the industry has amassed £64bn of debt.

Public service providers like Thames Water are too big to fail, so the government bails them out, leaving taxpayers with the risk. Meanwhile, the regulatory system that is supposed to keep our rivers clean is totally ineffective, with enforcement agencies like the Environment Agency understaffed and underfunded.

Our rivers are now dumping grounds for sewage and political failures.  Successive Conservative and Labour Governments have failed to force these companies to serve the public.  Richard Murphy states that the Water Companies are “environmentally insolvent” – that they will never be able to fund the investment we need to deliver clean water from our taps and into our rivers. 

In 2021, Danny Kruger voted down an amendment to the Environment Bill that sought and outright ban on water companies discharging sewage.  He has since been seeking to tinker with Ofwat – using fines for environmental remediation,  seeking changes to the Strategic Policy Statement.   It is only this year – that the Environment Agency has been given a promised boost in funding to better police the water companies.

The outcome since Danny Kruger, and many other Conservatives voted not to ban sewage in 2021 is that sewage has continued to be dumped unabated into our chalk streams.  Perhaps a simple ban might have been easier to understand than the ineffectual changes that have applied.

In November 1989 PM Margaret Thatcher replied in PMQs that “water privatisation I believe will go very successfully indeed. And perhaps therefore we had better wait and see so that we can pontificate in the light of the facts.”  Well - we can now pontificate and agree that from the perspective of the public and the environment it has comprehensively failed.  We can no longer tinker, we have to be bold and consider public ownership, or as the Lib Dems have suggested public benefit companies.  Now.