In the UK right now the water system is broken. As a fundamental human need, water should belong to people, and water companies should be run in the public interest. Instead, English water companies work for a handful of shareholders around the world while pouring sewage into our waterways. It’s time to bring water back into public ownership.
The system is broken
Margaret Thatcher privatised water in England and Wales in 1989. She failed in Scotland, so they have publicly-owned Scottish Water, while Welsh Water is now a not-for-profit. England, therefore, has a unique model of privatisation. It didn’t just give private companies the right to operate, it sold off assets and infrastructure wholesale.
In England, your private water company has a monopoly in your area, and there is no market, with no choice about the water company you use. People were told privatisation would lead to lower bills and a better service, but the opposite has happened.
Since the 1990s, investment from the privatised English water companies has gone down 15%, while debt has ballooned to over £60 billion (paid for by us). Meanwhile, shareholders have received £78 billion over the last 35 years.
“Privatised water represents the most unholy of business models. A natural monopoly that a handful of foreign billionaires have captured, then drained of cash and loaded with debt – all the while, bills go up, and sewage spews into our rivers and seas. This is the doom loop of water profiteering. Their thirst for profit will never be satisfied and customers have nowhere to go.”
Who currently owns our water?
English water companies are more than 90% owned by shareholders abroad, for example:
• Wessex Water is 100% owned by a Malaysian company, YTL
• Northumbrian Water is owned by Hong Kong businessman Li Ka Shing
• Thames Water is partly owned by investors from the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, China and Australia
Read more about water company ownership in England here
Plus, these water companies have built up a debt mountain of over £60 billion, using this to finance dividends for shareholders. Our bills have gone up by 40% in real terms since privatisation, while the average pay for a water company CEO is £1.7 million a year. The biggest earner is Steve Mogford, CEO of United Utilities, on £2.9 million per year.
Public ownership of water to fight pollution
Meanwhile, these water companies pour raw sewage into waterways, leaking huge amounts of water every day. Instead of spending money on infrastructure to tackle sewage and leaks, the water companies prioritise their shareholders.
In 2024 water companies in England recorded 2,487 pollution incidents, the highest in a decade and more than double the target set by the Environment Agency. Firms were collectively set an Environment Agency target of a 40% reduction in pollution incidents, but instead recorded a 30% increase, according to Surfers Against Sewage.
SAS also said it received 1,853 sickness reports through its Safer Seas and Rivers Service app in 2024, an average of five people a day. 331 people had to see a doctor, with 79% of them reporting that their doctor had attributed their illness to sewage pollution.
Environment Agency figures from March also showed storm overflows spilled sewage into England’s rivers, lakes and coasts for more than 3.61 million hours in 2024, while households in England and Wales are still set to see their water bills increase by an average of £86 this year alone.
This is completely unacceptable.
“The numbers are staggering: record hours of sewage discharges, huge bill increases, thousands of people becoming ill and yet still the industry has the gall to still pay out billions of bill payer money to shareholders. Across the globe, the norm is to manage water at a local level, rather than the 100% private ownership model in place in England that has proved catastrophic for the environment and public health. The era of broken pipes and broken promises must end and be replaced by a fresh vision for water that ends pollution for profit and leads to a fair and transparent system – one that prioritises public health and value for customer money and delivers healthy coastlines, rivers and lakes”
– Giles Bristow, SAS chief executive
A survey for SAS also found that 27% of adults in England have considered withholding water bill payments due to anger with the actions of their supplier. Just 33% believed that their water supplier will take the necessary action to end sewage pollution.
It’s time to take action. It’s time to bring water back under public ownership.
Why regulation isn’t the answer
Campaigners have tried to get regulation for 34 years, since privatisation in 1989, and it has failed. In fact, research looking at the role of regulation in water networks confirmed that regulation has ‘consistently been biased towards investors.
According to We Own It, regulation has failed for five important reasons:
- Privatised water companies are at no risk of ever losing their monopolies, as there is no competition. As it stands, we have to give them 25 years notice if we want to take back our water.
- Ofwat, the regulator, is hopelessly captured – there’s a revolving door between people working at the water companies and people working in Ofwat. This makes it very unlikely that it will do a good job of holding water companies accountable.
- The Environment Agency is hopelessly underfunded. Its funding has been cut by 50% over the past decade, so it’s very difficult for it to hold water companies to account. Staff are not being allowed to do the job of protecting our environment.
- The fines water companies have to pay are too small to have any impact. Water companies see them as the cost of doing business and continue polluting.
- The water companies are set up to prioritise making a profit for their shareholders. This means they are incentivised to invest as little as possible in the infrastructure. Instead of having water companies with a public mission and public accountability, these companies have to deliver for their shareholders first, and the rest of us second. Publicly owned Scottish Water has spent £72 more per household per year (35% more) than the privatised English water companies. If England had invested at this rate, an extra £28 billion would have gone into the infrastructure to tackle problems like leaks and sewage.
So what do we do?
Take back water: the movement to take water back into public ownership
Take Back Water is an alliance of activists who’ve come together to fight for full democratic public ownership of water.
They believe that financial disobedience is the tactic we need, and the best lever we can use to force the government to act. But taking this kind of action can be scary, so we need a mass movement of all us acting together to make it work.
Take Back Water is a decentralised campaign, with a small core team providing some supporting infrastructure for people to run their own actions against the water companies in their area. Their plan is to build a powerful participatory movement, enabling ordinary people to develop self-organised, mass social and political interventions.
The movement is open to anyone who wants to take back water: there are no paid staff, creative agencies or ‘experts’, and there’s no institutional funding. They use skills that have been honed over years of organising, and political insights gained from being involved in movements and learning from them.
How to take action
In the UK we pay ever-higher bills while water firms dump billions of litres of sewage in our rivers and seas and hand billions of pounds to their shareholders. But they rely on the public to go along with this system.
So what if we don’t?
From the Poll Tax to Don’t Pay, refusing to pay en masse is a powerful act. Private water is currently vulnerable, as the industry strains under a mountain of debt. If people we act now, we can force the private profiteers out and take back our water.
While the government sides with private equity firms and hedge funds who own our water, over ten thousand people have already signed up to mass non-payment. That’s enough people to withhold half a million pounds from the water firms every month, and we need more to join the call. Millions of people are considering not paying their water bills; our potential power is immense. If we can get organised and stop paying together, we can end private water for good.
Through refusing to pay we can protect each other from bill hikes, push back against greed of water bosses and put an end to a failing industry that should serve the people, but doesn’t. We’ve seen this work before, it’s time to take action together.
Pledge to strike and fight back against water companies here
The post It’s Time For Public Ownership Of The Water Industry, Here’s How We Take Back Water appeared first on Ethical Unicorn.
