Doom: Water Company may go bust

[SueEllen]

How?

They have a monopoly.

https://news.sky.com/story/ministers...water-12910760

The government has begun drawing up contingency plans for the collapse of Thames Water amid growing doubts in Whitehall about the ability of Britain’s biggest water company to service its £14bn debt-pile.
Sky News has learnt that ministers and Ofwat, the industry regulator, have started to hold discussions about the possibility of placing Thames Water into a special administration regime (SAR) that would effectively take the company into temporary public ownership.

Such an insolvency process was used by the government when the energy supplier Bulb collapsed in 2021, sparking concerns that it could cost taxpayers billions of pounds.

Ultimately, the Bulb administration is likely to have cost the public purse a far smaller sum, but water industry ownership restrictions which prevent consolidation mean this figure could be dwarfed if Thames Water was to fail.

The talks within Whitehall, which involve the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Ofwat and the Treasury, remain at a preliminary stage and relate at the moment only to contingency plans which may not need to be activated.

[dsc]

Decades of cutting costs and paying massive dividends, I'm surprised it's only happening now.

[vetran]

Its only happening now because they know the game is up.

Maybe Ofwat will get some teeth.

[Paddy]

TW sold off the reservoirs and paid themselves millions in bonuses for doing so. TW is being sued on a massive scale for flooding basement flats with sewage in the Holland Park area caused by gross negligence.

[TestMangler]

Putting water into private hands was a totally wank idea in the first place.

[SueEllen]

Looks like it could be the start of something.

"In December, Ofwat flagged concerns about the finances of other companies, including Yorkshire Water, SES Water and Portsmouth Water. "

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business...sible-collapse

[AtW]

They were price controlled so thats the end result of zero incentive to invest

[Protagoras]

Its only happening now because they know the game is up.

Maybe Ofwat will get some teeth.

If a water company company goes bust, then then it should be nationalised at no cost to the tax payer.
And the government must not be on the hook for private sector debt; losses need to be with creditors and shareholders.

[d000hg]

Just make water free aka funded through taxation for domestic use. Clean water and sewerage are just infrastructure in a civilised country, like roads.

[dsc]

Combined debt of water companies in the UK is over 65 fecking billion quid. Surely this falls under some sort of mismanagement investigation and lock up of some individuals?