plan for collapse of Thames Water

adam cool dude said:
The gypsies had the right idea all along. Whenever I go past one of their settlements for the most part they are all well kept. Nice concrete and flash cars.
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you must have a better class of gypsy than we get round my parts. The descend every few years and when they leave there is a total mess of all sorts of discussing muck,.and strangely enough local damage increases to locked gates.etc!.

btw (and I am being facetious to a point as they were given a commune near my folks as well but....... if they have a settlement does that not mean they are no longer travellers and should have to pay their water rates or what ever same as everyone else?)
 
Werewolf said:
IIRC our current water bill (well water and waste) is already around 700.
With the sort of price increase they're talking about for my region it could approach our council tax...
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Don't worry; your council tax will go up enough to ensure water doesn't catch up :cry:

I just checked, and when I first moved out of home (~11 years ago now) I was paying £20 a month. Water was a trivial bill. It's now £80-ish a month & Severn Trent wants to put it up to £125-ish by 2030 :eek:
 
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How can these companies demand customers pay more when they make large profits time after time and have never invested anything in any meaningful upgrades or new reservoirs etc.


Baffles me.
 
MadMossy said:
These water companies are beholden to share holders, last year their profits were astronomical and instead of investing that profit in the business, it's handed to the share holders. That is the problem and has been for nigh on 20+ years.
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They do take profit from the businesses, but you can just view that as essentially the cost of capital, servicing a debt. I'd definitely agree it's a rather inefficient way to raise capital for monopolistic public services like water and sewage, but that is a way of looking at it.

Investment has been pretty high across the board, so only a portion of the operational profit gets used for shareholder dividends. Thames Water was exploited exceptionally badly until 2017 though.

Offwat is responsible for regulating the whole thing and unfortunately they've been asleep at the wheel for some time (likely in line with government wishes).
 
GreatAuk said:
They do take profit from the businesses, but you can just view that as essentially the cost of capital, servicing a debt. I'd definitely agree it's a rather inefficient way to raise capital for monopolistic public services like water and sewage, but that is a way of looking at it.

Investment has been pretty high across the board, so only a portion of the operational profit gets used for shareholder dividends. Thames Water was exploited exceptionally badly until 2017 though.

Offwat is responsible for regulating the whole thing and unfortunately they've been asleep at the wheel for some time (likely in line with government wishes).
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Thames water has been paying more dividends to share holders than it’s been making and has ended up with a massive debt because of this.
 
I don't understand why these companies are allowed to get away with this behaviour. The government sit there and talk about wokeness, and migrant boats, instead of introducing policies that actually have an effect on the peoples real concerns.
 
What has happened to ofwat and water companies in the past decade though. We just had 7 new water pollution earnings here I the south west, we get them almost every time there's a bit of rain now. Never used to get them.
 
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More people pooping in the same tiny sewer system built 150 years ago, it's really not difficult to see that a lack of infrastructure to support the pooping is causing poopification of our rivers.
 
MadMossy said:
What has happened to ofwat and water companies in the past decade though. We just had 7 new water pollution earnings here I the south west, we get them almost every time there's a bit of rain now. Never used to get them.
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They've installed more monitoring. It's probably not happening any more than it used to, you just get to know about it now.

Edit - and to pre-emptively answer "why on earth have they only just done that?" - because the regulators have only relatively recently required that it be done and permitted them to spend money doing it.
 
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MadMossy said:
What has happened to ofwat and water companies in the past decade though. We just had 7 new water pollution earnings here I the south west, we get them almost every time there's a bit of rain now. Never used to get them.
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There's a lot more monitoring now, so sewage overflows actually get recorded. In some areas there might have been a very small increase in the number of overflow events, but by and large things haven't got any worse (and in some places they've actually got better).
 
wordy said:
Thames water has been paying more dividends to share holders than it’s been making and has ended up with a massive debt because of this.
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The owners of Thames Water have taken more money out of it than it has been making, and paid that money out to its shareholders, leaving Thames with the massive debt.
It's a bit like EKWB-US and their parent company in Slovenia.
 
StriderX said:
More people pooping in the same tiny sewer system built 150 years ago, it's really not difficult to see that a lack of infrastructure to support the pooping is causing poopification of our rivers.
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since there was a bbc podcast today on 'fine to flush' V

needs to be some taxation on wet wipe products that people are disposing into sewers exacerbating problems - that's something kier could practically propose whilst visiting a sewerage plant,
he's proposed FA so far (haven't looked but maybe europe already considered this,)
Even on the micro level our estate often needs additional maintenance on sewerage system that costs me money.

Removal of Certification
Sky news recently reported that the Environmental Department estimated that between 2.1-2.9 billion wet wipes end up in Britain’s waterways each year, and clogging up sewers and creating huge ‘wet-wipe reefs’ and contributing to ‘fatbergs’ in waterways.

In response to mounting concerns over environmental damage and infrastructure strain caused by non-flushable products, regulatory bodies have now announced the retraction of the fine to flush rule in March 2024.

This signifies a pivotal shift in waste management standards. It emphasises the need for products that are truly biodegradable, plastic-free and align with our commitment to a better environment as a nation.
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McPhee said:
Don't worry; your council tax will go up enough to ensure water doesn't catch up :cry:

I just checked, and when I first moved out of home (~11 years ago now) I was paying £20 a month. Water was a trivial bill. It's now £80-ish a month & Severn Trent wants to put it up to £125-ish by 2030 :eek:
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I remember paying just 60-90 for water now its double that. Southern want to put it up by 91%! Guess which water company I have...

GreatAuk said:
There's a lot more monitoring now, so sewage overflows actually get recorded. In some areas there might have been a very small increase in the number of overflow events, but by and large things haven't got any worse (and in some places they've actually got better).
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Except when they don't Countryfile actually had a useful piece on this last weekend one guy has been monitoring the overflow from traatment works it regularly discharges sewage into a ditch that runs alongside the road and straight into the chalk stream river, he's reported every incident and they have been plenty over the winter the environment agency coalesced all the reports into a single "incident" and classified it as "minor" despite an almost constant discharge of raw sewage even alongside the side of road where people walk their dogs etc, its disingenuous at best and frankly just plain massaging the figures. It also does nothing to address the issue. its whitewashing plain and simple.
 
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Uther said:
Well that's just peachy...
news.sky.com

Water bills to rise by average 21% over next five years, regulator rules

The industry accuses the regulator of repeating mistakes of the past by blocking the scale of infrastructure investment needed through much larger hikes to household bills.
news.sky.com news.sky.com
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Can't squeeze any more put of oil and gas, so on to the next commodity to plunder. That's how it feels anyway.

Water butts and purification rigs at the ready! (I kid, but hopefully this doesn't become a prescient post in years to come).
 
If you want them to stop pumping turds into the rivers, that’s going to cost money. That cost is going to get passed on to the customer, I’m not sure how anyone can think it wouldn’t be.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
If you want them to stop pumping turds into the rivers, that’s going to cost money. That cost is going to get passed on to the customer, I’m not sure how anyone can think it wouldn’t be.
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i think customers would stomach increased bills if they didnt see shareholders taking massive profits as the system crumbles.

now i know people have posted that it isnt as simple as that but when that is what is reported in the media that is the conclusion most people reach.

the top and bottom of it is essential public services should not be privatised..... they should not be run for profit at all, or more accurately any profit should be fed back into the system not skimmed off to investers.

it was a long time ago, however wasnt one of the promises of privatisation that the infrastructure would be completely revamped as part of the privatisation package?..... it looks to me like that has not happened , or at least not very much.

Maybe it is just unfortunate timing however it does also seem to have gotten much worse after we came out of the EU when the companies would have faced much higher fines due to the EU water quality Directive (cant remember the exact name) . Am sure i read somewhere that the French are considering sueing us for the amount of waste we are now dumping into the channel.
 
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The main issue is that a number of Water Companies were purchased by investment companies, they then borrowed a lot of money against them, extracted that borrowed money out of the business for thier own benefit and then sold them on to other investment companies (This is what happened what Thames Water and Southern/South East Water?)

That means they are heavily in debt at a time when interest rates rose sharply and now revenue outstrips debt repayments, hence why we are where we are at least in TW's case.

The current owners arent willing to invest anymore money and with increase instances of Water Supply Failures, Scrutiny on Sewage discharge and Contamination problems customers are unwilling to pay more until some significant improvements are made.

My opinion is OfWat were asleep at the wheel and lack atrong leadership even now. On the face of it they advocate for consumers but they spend far too much time in nice boardrooms with water companoes and not around Sarahs house who had to spend the last two months boiling drinking water, or the 5th day using bottled water to flush her log down the toilet
 
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