Water companies in England ‘will take 2,000 years to replace pipe network’

39 comments
  1. Mainly because they under man their teams and run at skeleton numbers at all times.

    It’s amazing how under staffed the energy, water and communication services are.

    Common issue, they are all privately owned and the main aim is to make the shareholders as much cash as possible

  2. Absolutely fucking lovely, more good news.

    As long as the shareholders are getting rich though that’s all that matters.

  3. Ok, so provide the money and resource to do it quicker. I presume noone who’s whinged here would complain about your roads having more roadworks and more water stops whilst work is completed.

  4. Pretty sure it didn’t take 2000years to lay the ones we have. Just corrupt privately owned companies not wanting to do anything so more money goes to shareholders

  5. Can anyone put this into perspective? The article said 1tn litres are lost a year; is that a lot? Like how much does the country use annually?

  6. How about no dividents or CEO bonus payment till it’s fixed? You bet it will be fixed in 3 weeks…

  7. You know in Civ you get ridiculous things like it taking 40 years to train a guy to wack another guy with a stick?

    This is that irl.

  8. So they admin they can’t run the water companies correctly and so want to hand them back to the country at no cost?

    Because as far as im concerned that’s exactly what is being said.

  9. Maybe if done one after another, but thankfully there are several water companies who have several teams who should be able to be deployed to reduce this time significantly.

  10. more money for my homies in CEO positions. we got to make sure they take millions home to feed their rich life style and greed. we dont deserve good things but our rich overlords do. /s

  11. Just total lies, in the 1800s there was no sewage or fresh water supply infrastructure, even into the late 1890s housed had wells and human waste was collected dry in buckets and used as fertiliser. So being very fair it has taken less than 200 years to get where we are now so no way on earth with modern technology 50 years at most is required including the ability to move large amounts of water from flooded to dry areas. Nationalise water and sewage and invest heavily for our future generations plus throw the board members of these companies into jail and loose the key

  12. Or rather, they chose to take two thousand years because they get a slap on the wrist for sewage being dumped in the sea and rivers, a slap on the wrist for causing droughts etc… They will never update the network unless they are forced to.

  13. I work in the water industry contracting to the water boards. They’re hilariously inefficient because they will never take advice on things that saves them time and money.

    Every time we get a job, we need to organise traffic management, every time we do, we’ll recommend they use our traffic management we hire to get things done themselves that need doing… and by the time it gets passed from every man and his dog, the permit window gets missed and we’re onto them having to do it another week, which then means we have to wait that long if we need them to get that sorted first as well…

    There’s so little thought to thinking ahead to avoid later costs and increase efficiency. It’s mind-numbing.

  14. Shareholding being the primary driver and a weak as f&£k regulator (colluding in my opinion) is wrong .especially with water.

    There is no competition, at least with gas and electric you used to be able to shop about. Water nope!

    Either re nationalise or Ofwat should be given 3 rules

    1- a maximum profit margin allowed ..1-2%

    2- bonus profit if they meet pipe renewal and customer service targets .

    3- any f ups sewerage leaks etc come out of that profit

  15. What they really mean is that maintenance does not keep up with the ageing of the system, and the pipes are basically crumbling in front of our eyes.

    We need to spend a lot more money on maintenance to even maintain a basic level of system operation.

    That being said, we just had all the roads dug up and all the old iron pipes replaced by plastic. Let’s hope that they will last those 2000 years until they get round again.

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