Thames Water has agreed a payment plan with the water regulator for fines it owes worth \u00a3123m, as it races to secure funding to avoid temporary nationalisation.<\/p>\n
The water company, which serves 16 million customers across London and the south-east, is trying to pull together a deal to avoid collapse.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the government approved the appointment of insolvency advisers<\/a> FTI Consulting to consult on plans for Thames Water to be placed into a special administration regime.<\/p>\n The debt-laden utility company was hit with a record \u00a3104m fine<\/a> by Ofwat in May over environmental breaches involving sewage spills, after failing to operate and manage its treatment works and wastewater networks effectively.<\/p>\n At the same time, a further \u00a318.2m fine was levied on Thames for breaking dividend rules, the first penalty of its kind in the water industry. Ofwat said the company had paid out cash to investors despite having fallen short in its services to customers and its environmental record.<\/p>\n The penalties were originally due to be paid by 20 August but the regulator has given the company some breathing space to pay the fines.<\/p>\n Ofwat had previously told Thames that the penaltieshad to be \u201cpaid by the company and its investors, and not by customers\u201d.<\/p>\n The regulator has approved Thames\u2019s request for a payment plan, which will result in it paying \u00a324.5m, or 20% of the penalties, by the end of September, with the rest to be paid later.<\/p>\n The company will pay the remainder on the earliest of three possible dates, which would be either 30 days after the implementation of a restructuring plan, or if Thames enters an SAR the balance would be due 30 days after the end of that process. The final deadline for payment of the fine will be 31 March 2030.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Lynn Parker, the senior director of enforcement at Ofwat, said: \u201cThis payment plan continues to hold Thames Water to account for their failures but also recognises the ongoing equity raise and recapitalisation process.\u201d<\/p>\n Thames said in a statement it \u201ccontinues to work closely with stakeholders to secure a market-led recapitalisation which delivers for customers and the environment as soon as practicable\u201d.<\/p>\n The company confirmed the penalties \u201cwill not be funded by customer bills\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thames Water has agreed a payment plan with the water regulator for fines it owes worth \u00a3123m, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[51,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-377200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115099899266763039","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}