Water bosses ‘will face criminal charges’ over sewage dumping | ITV News

14 comments

1. Hoorah.

   Celebrate the discovery of cojones while it lasts.

2. I’ll wait to see what the consequences are, if it’s more than a slap on the wrist I’ll be surprised. Should gun for their bonuses over the time they were in charge when the sewage dumping happened, but doubt it.

3. I would rather go for bonuses, pensions etc maybe repaying even.

   Cant pay we will take it away!

   Chances are just be wrist slapping and money burning.

4. They also need to be financially audited.

   They loaded BILLIONS in debt onto the water companies and “may” have paid themselves 100s of millions in illegal *processing fees*

   There are also rumors they found ways to transfer debt/tax due from their OWN privately-owned companies onto the water companies books, which if true would be VERY illegal indeed

5. Sounds like a great headline but likely not much else.

   *- would be great to see some sort of repucusons for these city types*

6. The same water bosses we just gave control of the gas infrastructure too?

7. Basically the companies will get fined, then our bills will be increased to cover it.

8. Will …. Fucking will, why the hell are they not already. Pretty sure if I took a tank truck of shit down the local river I’d be banged up. But when a corporation does it ohhh that’s okay then

9. “This should never have been allowed to happen, and, with our new Labour government, it will never happen again.”

   Is this the Edinburgh fringe. Best joke ever.

10. I work for a company that supplies products to the water companies and we have been saying this for years. They buy cheap Indian and Russian pipe which fails in ten years instead of 50 so they can make more profit for shareholders, and hold back on anything more than the bare minimum investment for projects.

11. *Mr Reed could not say what level of dumping would need to happen before criminal charges would be triggered.*

    This is the problem. How spills are measured are so contestable that it will need Southern Water 2010-2015 levels of dodginess before anything actually happens

    Nothing will notably change due to this in the short term

12. Criminal charges as in jail time *and* proportional fines I hope.

13. Good move but can’t help but feel this is slightly performative. It doesn’t really change the fundamental issue that the infrastructure is not fit for purpose and we need to spend big.

    Labour should really be honest and come up with a practical plan.

14. I won’t be getting too excited about this, I doubt there will be any real punishment unless they can do something like cap water rates so they can’t pass the cost of any fines onto the consumer.