Marcus Butcher

Half of England is in drought. 40% of us are under a hosepipe ban. Here’s what the water companies did with the 35 years they were given: 💧 2.87 billion litres leaked every single day. Nearly one in five litres put into supply, lost. 💧 A national hosepipe ban saves about 577 million litres a day. Five times less than they leak. They ration us to cover their own failure. 💧 25 reservoirs sold off. Not one major new reservoir built since 1992. 💧 England faces a 5 billion litre a day shortfall in public water supply by 2055. 💧 £85 billion paid out in dividends since privatisation. 💧 £0 of debt in 1989. Over £70 billion now. Borrowed against your bills, to pay their shareholders. 💧 Almost a third of your bill goes on servicing that debt and paying dividends. Not on pipes. 💧 Thames Water took a £3 billion rescue loan at 9.75% interest. You pay for that too. 💧 £25.3 million in pay for chief executives and finance directors last year, up on the year before, despite a bonus ban. Thames handed £4.1 million to senior staff the ban didn’t cover. They didn’t fail to fix the pipes because it was hard. They didn’t fix them because leaking is cheaper than investing, and the money got pissed away to the assorted circus of vulture capital. We don’t need better regulation of them. We don’t need tighter control of them. We need to own it. Public ownership. Nothing less.

Public ownership of water: Workers back it. The public backs it. It’s common sense. The Government needs to get to it, right away.