Thames Water is set to appeal to a regulator to allow it to charge even more to customers. They’re going to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to ask to raise bills by a whopping 59% over the next 5 years. That far outstrips the 35% limit set by the Water Regulation Authority, or Ofwat.
Thames Water is outrageous
The move is particularly outrageous given Thames Water’s recent piss-poor performance. Just yesterday, the Canary’s Steve Topple reported that the company left around 10,000 residents in South London without water for over 54 hours. Inevitably, the chair of Thames Water said:
We put forward a realistic business plan for 2025-30 that addressed our customers’ and stakeholders’ priorities such as providing safe and resilient water supplies and improving performance.
Oh, what’s that?
Stakeholders?
Won’t someone please think of the poor stakeholders!
How much more fucking money do Thames Water need to pump our water full of sewage? Is their thinking that because they pumped 72 billion – BILLION – litres of sewage into the Thames since 2020, this proposed pay hike means they could pump never-before-seen levels of shit into the Thames?
It can’t be to cover their massive £104 million fine they have to pay along with three other water companies. After all, that only represented 66% of their profits. The Canary’s Steve Topple explained that £104 million is nothing to Thames Water because:
it paid its executive board a total of nearly £3.3m in pay and other perks. It’s key management personnel were paid nearly £9m.
And Thames Water’s profit before tax was £157m. Overall, it raked in £2.5bn in revenue.
Of course, the company claims it is on the brink – because of years of mismanagement and plundering of the public. Yet the crooks at Thames Water signed off on £150m of dividends, anyway – once again, dwarfing the Ofwat fine.
A joke
We Own It, a nationalisation campaign group, said:
Thames Water is a joke. But it’s a joke at our expense.
A blatant cash grab, from a company on the brink of bankruptcy and drowning in its own debt.
Govt must take Thames into full permanent public ownership before they do more damage to our wallets and the environment. pic.twitter.com/2wH7oDLhlk
— We Own It (@We_OwnIt) February 14, 2025
One commenter was spot on:
So if Thames Water are in so much financial trouble they can’t fix the infrastructure problems which affect us all , they should stop paying their shareholders large dividends until the work is fixed. Those of us who don’t have shares are being held to ransom by those who do
— Esther Page (@EstherP07654101) February 14, 2025
Lib Dem Tim Farron said:
Outrageous that companies like Thames Water continue to plunge themselves into billions of debt, whilst demanding bill hikes for customers.
Ofwat is not up to the task and has failed to hold water companies like Thames Water to account. https://t.co/AD4WhhpruF
— Tim Farron (@timfarron) February 14, 2025
A fine that Thames Water can easily pay isn’t going to address the issues at hand. Ofwat can only ever be a straining bit of tape over the ensuing flood of shit-filled water.
Accounting professor Prem Sikka asked who protests customers in all this:
Thames Water asks UK competition watchdog to approve 53% price hike.
OFWAT approved 35% rise.
Sewage will continue to be dumped, dividends and high debt will continue.
Regulators now have a duty to promote growth of industry.
Who protects customers?https://t.co/9rNR2JnSsx
— Prem Sikka (@premnsikka) February 14, 2025
And there’s the thing – Thames Water doesn’t exist for its customers, it exists to take a fundamental part of human existence and turn it into profit for shareholders.
Bun the whole lot – including Thames Water
If Thames Water keep getting fined for pumping sewage into waters, if they keep having outages, if they don’t have the infrastructure to do their jobs, then why should shareholders receive any dividends at all?
As it stands, Thames Water is on the brink of financial collapse. Why should the public have to bear the brunt of paying for them to be able to fulfil their most basic function? If they can’t provide safe and clean drinking water, and if they can’t run their business properly, why is that our issue?
Cat Hobbs, founder of We Own It, had a similar view:
Absurd appeal from Thames Water – beyond a joke
They want your bills to increase by *more than 35%*!
For your own good, mind you
CMA (and Ofwat) must stand firm for consumers
Steve Reed must bring Thames Water into PERMANENT PUBLIC OWNERSHIP NOWhttps://t.co/dMTR6qK2Va
— Cat Hobbs (@CatHobbs) February 14, 2025
Public ownership can’t solve the rot of the last few decades on its own. But, it would be a step towards actually protecting customers from ever-increasing bills for basic utilities.
Remarkably, Thames Water are also after a £3 billion bailout from investors. We Own It are campaigning for the company to be brought into special administration. They argue:
Labour must ensure the shareholders who made this crisis don’t see another penny of public money. In short, we must not rescue the business for shareholders, but transfer into public ownership so people and planet come before profit.
It’s disgraceful that a company which has made so much money for shareholders has the bare-faced cheek to claim that it wants to raise bills in service of those very same customers. The way these companies are run is fundamentally fucked up. Having clean and safe water is a basic human right, and if left to the likes of Thames Water, they’ll always choose profit and shareholders instead.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.