{"id":515846,"date":"2025-10-21T02:03:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T02:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/515846\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T02:03:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T02:03:11","slug":"thames-water-wants-permission-to-pollute-britains-water-until-2040","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/515846\/","title":{"rendered":"Thames Water wants permission to pollute Britain’s water until 2040"},"content":{"rendered":"

Environmental barrister Paul Powlesland, founder of Lawyers for Nature<\/a>, said water companies have effectively enjoyed \u201cleniency\u201d for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe law hasn\u2019t been enforced against them. There are outfalls which have been illegally spilling sewage for 30 years, and the money that should have been spent fixing these was effectively given to shareholders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today (21 October), campaigners will gather outside Ofwat\u2019s headquarters to urge the regulator to reject the plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWater companies profit from pollution. The less money they invest in our water infrastructure, the more they can pay out to shareholders,\u201d said Sophie Conquest, lead campaigner at We Own It<\/a>. The pro-nationalisation organisation has organised today\u2019s protests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThames Water has a mountain of debt, and has breached its statutory duties time and time again. We cannot reward this outrageous failure with leniency on rules and regulations. The only acceptable next step for Thames Water is special administration, followed by permanent public ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Why is Thames Water in so much trouble?<\/p>\n

Thames Water has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Last year, the company discharged raw sewage into Britain\u2019s waterways for more than 300,000 hours.<\/p>\n

Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n

In May, Ofwat handed the company a \u00a3123 million fine for a \u201cseries of failures\u201d linked to \u201cinadequate\u201d wastewater operations. Campaigners have a blunter description.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re poisoning our water,\u201d Powlesland told Big Issue. And it\u2019s worse than official figures suggest: many overflows are unrecorded or underreported.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn most rivers, we have no idea where the illegal sewer is going in and how much is going in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Powlesland founded the River Roding Trust<\/a> to clean up London\u2019s third-largest river. He has spent much of the summer sampling river water to measure sewage levels. The results, he says, are grim.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust today I was out\u2026 there is one overflow upstream that is literally a waterfall of raw shit going into the river. It is measurable half a mile downstream, and it is killing the river<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thames Water argues it cannot afford to make the necessary improvements immediately.<\/p>\n

Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s \u00a319 billion debt has built up since privatisation in 1989. Over the past 35 years, it has borrowed to fund investment and pay dividends, often taking on new loans to meet interest payments.<\/p>\n

In December, the High Court approved a \u00a33bn cash injection from creditors \u2013 at a staggering 9.75% interest rate, which will be repaid through customer bills. Water bills are expected to rise by an average of \u00a331 per year over the next five years.<\/p>\n

Mike McTighe, proposed future chair of Thames Water under the non-binding plan, admitted there is a \u201chuge amount of work\u201d to be done but insisted a creditor-led turnaround is possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether with committed and experienced new investors, the collective focus of the new board under London & Valley Water\u2019s plan will be on fixing the foundations, reducing pollution and rebuilding public trust so that by the end of this decade Thames Water can once again be a reliable, resilient, and responsible company.\u201d<\/p>\n

The alternative is special administration, which would place Thames Water under temporary government control and likely involve writing off large portions of its debt.<\/p>\n

Conquest argues that if this happens, the government should not sell the company back to private investors.<\/p>\n

Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n

\u201cThe analogy we use is if you have a house and it\u2019s falling apart and the foundations are ruined, it\u2019s much more difficult to make those fundamental repairs if you don\u2019t own it. But if you own the house, you can make those changes much quicker.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a privatised water system, so much of the money that we\u2019re paying as bill payers is going straight back out into the pockets of banks and shareholders. If it were publicly owned, that money could instead go into infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regulators must decide whether to accept parts of the plan, demand stricter oversight, or to push Thames Water into special administration.<\/p>\n

Powlesland says the final option is probably the best \u2013 but the lack of data on sewage discharges remains an even greater problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think the experience of the last 30 years has shown that the profit motive doesn\u2019t work \u2013 it gives an added incentive to break the law. So realistically, for a sustainable long-term system, nationalisation and running it in the public interest is probably necessary,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s not sufficient, because the government will need to actually do this work, and they, at the moment, have no plan, no data, to actually go and fix this problem.<\/p>\n

Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is not a single river in probably the whole of England where we know how much illegal sewage is going in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reader-funded since 1991 \u2013 Big Issue brings you trustworthy journalism that drives real change.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every day, our journalists dig deeper, speaking up for those society overlooks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Could you help us keep doing this vital work? <\/strong>Support our journalism from \u00a35 a month<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Environmental barrister Paul Powlesland, founder of Lawyers for Nature, said water companies have effectively enjoyed \u201cleniency\u201d for decades.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[168354,748,393,13581,4884,1144,856,168355,712,16,15,1764,6507,63372],"class_list":{"0":"post-515846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-access-to-water","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-environment-and-community","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-northern-ireland","16":"tag-pollution","17":"tag-river-pollution","18":"tag-scotland","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-wales","22":"tag-water","23":"tag-water-pollution"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115409702446419592","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515846","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=515846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}