Thames Water have secured a profit of £414m in just six months, following a 31% increase in customer bills in April.
Despite this, the company claimed there was uncertainty on its “status as a going concern”. It added that it might have to be temporarily nationalised in the “very near term” if it is unable to agree on the terms of a formal takeover by its controlling lenders.
The creditors have asked Ofwat – the water regulator, and the government for Thames Water to be let off future fines for dumping sewage pollution. Apparently, the:
prospect of hundreds of millions of pounds of extra costs is making a turnaround impossible.
I wonder if they’ve tried, maybe not polluting?
As the Canary previously reported:
Stricken water company Thames Water is over £20bn in debt. It’s currently being kept on life-support by a consortium of lenders collectively known as London Valley and Water (LVW). Overall, Thames Water owes LVW more than £13bn.
Currently, LVW are locked in talks with water regulator Ofwat to write off 25% of its debt and provide a £4bn cash boost. However, they’re also begging to be allowed to continue to pollute Britain’s waterways without consequence for years to come.
And an analysis by Barclays showed that LVW’s ‘rescue plan’ might leave customers paying almost 20% more by 2030. It claims that bill-payers will bear part of the financial risk to Thames Water. However, Barclays also conceded that selling Thames Water to a China-based company could raise national security concerns.
Thames Water has been facing collapse for over a year due to £17.6bn of net debt. It has accumulated this over several decades since privatisation.
However, the company still managed to secure over £400m in profit. This is at the same time as the number of complaints it received also increased by 75%.
Thames Water killing the environment
Thames Water supplies 16 million customers across the south-east of England. It has repeatedly failed to tackle sewage pollution and has faced numerous fines. Of course, Thames Water previously attempted to get out of the fines that Ofwat imposed upon it for sewage spills and service failures.
The company also received the biggest ever penalty for breaking rules on sewage spillages and shareholder profits – totalling £122.7m If the company polluted badly enough to earn that kind of fine, even with restrictions in place – imagine what they’ll do if Ofwat take the safety wheels off.
Ofwat found that 75% of Thames Water’s storm overflows were spilling “routinely and not in exceptional circumstances”. However, customers of the worst-performing water companies (ahem, Thames Water) are facing the greatest bill increases. Thames Water is charging customers 35% more. In 2024, it raised average bills from £436 to £588.
Stopping bonuses
Recently, Ofwat stopped more than £4 million of potential bonuses for water bosses under new rules on performance-related executive pay. This included Thames Water’s chief executive, Chris Weston, and Steve Buck, its chief financial officer.
But Chris Weston still received a base salary of £850,000 – which is absolutely disgusting given the state of the country’s waterways. Overall, without a bonus, his remuneration package was £1.035m. And let’s face it – a salary like that is hardly an incentive to make any big changes.
As usual, the bosses at Thames Water are prioritising their hefty salaries over the quality of the service (and water) they provide to customers. And trying to worm their way out of fines for polluting the oceans and rivers that the British public values just shows how little they care about both our quality of life and the cost-of-living crisis.
Stopping bonuses only scratches the surface. There is no doubt that we need investment in our waterways, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of unaffordable bills that drive even more people into debt.
Featured image via TLDR News/ YouTube
By HG
This post was originally published on Canary.