Thames Water isn’t solely to blame for the South’s dirty rivers

Few will, or should, feel sympathy for Thames Water being fined 9 per cent of its annual turnover for fouling rivers through sewage discharges. Water regulator Ofwat found numerous failings with maintenance and a lack of investment, which resulted in sewage discharges becoming a routine event rather than an emergency response to heavy rainfall.

Thames Water has been under-investing for years, preferring to spend its profits on dividends for its private equity shareholders. What has happened with the rivers is an advert neither for Thames Water’s business ethics nor for privatisation of the water industry. What might have seemed to have worked when water companies were public companies quoted on the stock exchange and invested in by UK pension funds, among others, became a lot less satisfactory when they were taken over by overseas private equity, which chose to sweat assets rather than invest – always counting on tapping water customers (who are entrapped by water companies’ monopolies) to bail them out.