United Utilities boss admits water firm ‘isn’t good enough at stopping sewage dumping

8 comments

1. But it’s good enough to pay dividends and bonuses.

2. This link has been shared 3 times.

   First Seen [Here](https://redd.it/1iyqiww) on 2025-02-26. Last Seen [Here](https://redd.it/1iyrq47) on 2025-02-26

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3. The chief executive of United Utilities gets paid £1.4m and got a £420k bonus,while being absolutely shit at their job

4. Why are they paying dividends why are they in debt?

5. Brexit benefits

6. Am I the only person baffled by the sense of fining a water company when it will be paid by the companies customers and yet the employees and shareholders still continue to receive pay rises. bonuses and dividends.

   The whole concept of privatising utilities makes no sense to me when control passes from the UK to foreign ownership and the profits go out of the country.

   English water companies are between 70- 90% owned by shareholders abroad, e,g. Wessex Water is 100% owned by a Malaysian company, YTL, Northumbrian Water is owned by Hong Kong businessman Li Ka Shing, Thames Water is partly owned by investors from the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, China and Australia. Since privatisation, £72 billion has gone to shareholders – around £2 billion a year on average and the water companies have built up a debt mountain of over £60 billion and used this to finance dividends for shareholders. The National Security and Investment Act provides the power to block foreign takeovers of British companies on national security grounds but successive governments have not used these powers to protect UK consumers instead just tinker around the fringes with ineffectual rules and regulations that are rarely enforced to the benefit of the consumer in favour of placating the asset strippers.

   Publicly owned Scottish Water has spent £72 more per household per year (35% more) than the English water companies. If England had invested at this rate, an extra **£28 billion** would have gone into the infrastructure to tackle problems like leaks and sewage.

   Unlike products like food, furniture, electrical goods, cars etc there is no competition between water companies, it is a series of regional monopolies so the consumer cannot switch providers unless they move location, the so called ‘free market’ argument does not apply so the only motivation the companies have is to fleece the public by providing the minimum service for maximum profit.

   In addition we have the additional cost of funding ofwat which, according to their annual report and accounts for 2022-23, has a core budget for the year of £51.5m paid from our taxes. UN special rapporteur Prof Pedro Arrojo-Agudo says regulator Ofwat ‘complacent’ about water firms putting their shareholders before the publics and water systems should be managed as a publicly owned service, rather than run by private companies set up to benefit shareholders. Arrojo-Agudo said Ofwat was a costly regulatory institution that was not transparent. “The lack of transparency and public participation, and its complacency towards the financial strategies of private companies to benefit their shareholders at the detriment of the service received by the public, call into question its effectiveness,”

   Like Ofgem, Ofwat seems as effective as a chocolate teapot in holding anyone to account or protecting consumers interests and seems little more than an expensive ‘jobs for the boys’ institution just content in accepting the status quo and not rocking the boat in case anyone notices how pointless they really are.

7. Meanwhile my bill is going up by 30% in April so that they can apparently invest in the infrastructure. So WTF have they been spending profits on for the last 36 years?

8. “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” – while dumping sewage into Windermere

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