To think the water companies should be renationalised?

[jaundicedoutlook]

No tap water in Tunbridge Wells and other parts of Kent since Thursday.

SE Water set up a half arsed couple of bottle stations that ran dry within hours. No proper information on their website about what the issues are and what they are doing - just generic posts about trying to sort it out. Typically we’re getting an hour of tap water in the morning then dry taps. In the meantime they have paid out millions in dividends.

They are a total shambles and yet another example of Britain becoming a basket case.

Is it unreasonable to think the government shouldn’t tolerate this, strip them of their licence, and bring the whole thing back into public ownership?

Water is such an essential that it should not be sold to us for profit. YANBU.

Water is free. You can collect your own water if you want and not pay them a penny.

You pay the companies to clean it and pipe it to your home, and to take away your sewage.

It's very obvious that privatisation has failed. Years of public money inthe form if rates has been squandered in shareholder returns with no investment in the infrastructure. Its going to take nationalising plus increasing rates to get back to a system fit for purpose. It's going to take years to reverse the damage.

I also think they should privatise railways.

I don't disagree with the sentiment but I think you have far to much faith in the government to run these institutions without making a massive pig's ear of it.

My water company provided free lead testing. My water was close to the legal limit. They dug up the road and replaced the supply pipe for free. If it was pubic owned, they'd probably be telling me that lead is nothing to worry about.

We pay £25 a month.

I'm very happy with the privatised service that we receive.

Yes, we are in a similar situation. Can't get through to even talk to them. No idea what to do. It is unacceptable.
What are you doing about is?

Hard to see how it could be worse than the clusterfuck brought about by SE Water. Those millions of dividends could have been spent on building resilience in the supply chain rather than making their way to the pockets of (largely) overseas investors / profiteers.

DH drove to Orpington this evening, which was the nearest place he could get bottled water. Just about managing, but the laundry backlog is immense! Dread to think what people without cars or with vulnerable families are doing.

I think it varies. I had a leak they came out it was right in the boundary they fixed it as ultimately it’s good for both of us no issue. All the lost water wiped off my bill no problem. Problem is emergencies and you’ve seen how the govt act in an emergency would you really think they would be any better sadly.

I don't understand people leaving themselves so vulnerable by storing exactly no water.

Don't be one of the thousands needing supplies to be delivered - especially when there might be thousands of people in the queue. Even just a few litres will make you much more chilled out as to when help arrives.

Did no one learn anything from March 2020?

Have some supplies in your house.

I am curious to know what public service you think is running well at the moment. There may be problems with the private companies ... but do you really want Government to take over?Do you really think that would be better?

Water in Scotland and NI is not privatised, and wales is, but run as not for profit. I’m guessing councillors in England voted for water companies to be privatised, but know there was resistance in the other areas which lead to mixed ownership models. Totally agree that such an essential resource should not be run for profit, but I could say the same about gas and electricity, food etc and that seems unlikely

I'm 67, so can remember what things were like before privatisation.

Even during the bitter winter of 62/63, when things were frozen for ages, we didn't have people without water for ages. And although some areas had to use standpipes sometimes during the drought of '76, it never happened to anyone I knew.

Energy companies were nationalised and the govt controlled how much they put the prices up.

The nationalised railways were pretty reliable, and even my parents, who were very hard up until I was about 10, could afford train fares for us all to go and visit relatives.

I'm particularly furious with Southern Water. They spent much of the summer telling us to restrict water use, then they poured huge amounts of untreated sewage into the rivers and sea (despite having been hit with massive fines for the same a year or two ago) and now there are loads of people who've been without water for days.

They're more concerned with making a profit for shareholders than investing money maintaining their infrastructure.

Private monopolies are no better:

Trains are shit
Power cuts
No water

The entire business model of hiving off monopolies to the private sector is broken. You might complain about public services, but at least most of them are there when you need them and don’t leach millions in bonuses and dividends that could be reinvested.

... as opposed to millions of tax payers' money spent on water assets and still not producing the results that customers want. PPE. NHS. There a loads of examples of Government wasting our hard-earned cash.

@Palacepicker - the siphoning off of public funds into dodgy PPE deals was facilitated by politicians to pay their cronies in the private sector. Nothing to do with nationalisation. Outsourcing to the private sector through bent procurement deals is just another form of privatisation.

I think that water and utilities should be renationalised.
I agree that anything essential shouldn't be sold to us at a profit, including cleaning and piping the free water and removing sewage.

Privatisation was a con, selling off assets that we all owned for profit, and continuing to prioritise shareholder profit over investment.
This is happening with bits of the NHS and they want to do the same with all of it.

I also agree that they should renationalise the railways and the bus companies, because passenger transport is shambolic with all these unjoined up systems and tariffs.

The rail companies are as close to public ownership as you can get.

At least the utilities aren't striking - which is something - you might not think it's much but the NHS, Education, Railways..the public sector is letting us all down at the moment. It's not the holy grail.

I worked for one and completely agree. The sheer arrogance and waste of money was just awful, was glad to leave.
I don’t really get the whole model given that we can’t choose which water company we go with anyway.

And the electricity

Wales has a not for profit system, the people in Cardigan are just as fucked over as those in SE England. No private foreign equity firms siphoning off money, all funds are reinvested or discounted from customer's bills...but they just couldn't handle the problems caused by the deep freeze until they manifested.

The fact remains that overhauling a system that's literally antique in some places whilst maintaining the existing network would cost more than any firm or government would be willing to spend.

Maybe the 70s weren't as bad, but that was 50 years ago and that infrastructure is still in use today. You'd need seriously rose tinted glasses to not realise that has an impact.

Putting utilities back in the hands of the government I think would be a big mistake given their ineptitude at running the NHS, DVLA and Passport control etc. All underfunded, all poorly managed, all vital to the country and being let to go rotten day by day.

At least private firms have some idea of self preservation. Maybe not for profit should be the standard instead of the exception though.

Good god, no. What an awful idea. My local water company, Severn Trent, seems to do a pretty good job for a fair price. If the government tried to run the water industry it would inevitably end up as a dysfunctional mess in just the same way it was in the 1970s when they ruined the car industry and in the present day when it runs the useless, failed NHS.

I think not for profit or public is better. We also need to remember that not everything can be prevented, weather will impact utility networks no matter who owns them.

The problem with not-for-profit and public is that a budget still has to be set by the regulator or gov and stuck to, what are the incentives and penalties for a more efficient service? What happens when you don't have water? At the minute your water company will have service level requirements agreed with OFwat and consumer groups, when these are not met the result is fines - massive ones for Southern a couple of years ago! - the not-for-profit or public company doesn't suffer, they barely wince - they just carry on - fuck service levels - why would they care? Nothing happens - look at the NHS when they fail to meet a target - it's basically oops - but who gives a fuck!

The problem is they are monopolies. Privatisation and competition can never work with a monopoly.
It is all fine using the old infrastructure till its not