'It's time to blow fatcat water bosses out of the sector and take back control'

01 July 2023 , 16:09

957     0

The highest-paid bosses at nine water firms earned £13million last year and shelled out a total of £27.1m to their directors (Image: Getty Images)

My neighbour’s five-year-old son loves watering the plants but always makes sure the hosepipe is turned off afterwards.

“Water is precious” he told me the other day. “Plants need it and people need it but when there’s no rain the rivers get empty.”

The delightfully precocious Josh once gave me a lecture about fatbergs too - telling me how they block up sewers preventing the flow of human waste.

“Other people’s poo could float up into your toilet!” he announced with horror. “So NEVER flush wet wipes away.”

What a shame the fat cat water firm bosses aren’t as sensible and conscientious as Josh.

Water bills to rise by up to £47 a year from April - how to cut your costs

Like Sarah Bentley, chief of our supplier, Thames Water, which has 15million customers.

She pocketed £2million a year as the company paid huge dividends to wealthy foreign investors while dumping poo into our rivers, failing to invest in infrastructure and running up £14billion of debts.

Last year it released raw sewage 8,000 times for a total of 74,963 hours.

But now that Thames Water is at risk of going under, they think they should get help from the government- meaning we taxpayers would be paying to clean up their mess.

Other firms are reportedly planning to hike water bills by a whopping 40% to meet the costs of an industry-wide crisis.

And the whole thing stinks to high heaven.

The highest-paid bosses at nine water firms earned £13million last year and shelled out a total of £27.1m to their directors.

While the so-called regulator, Ofwat, failed to spot the gross mismanagement and corporate greed and let them rack up an eye-watering collective debt of £60 billion.

Well, the river water is really hitting the fan now, isn’t it?

And 34 years after Margaret Thatcher sold off the water industry it looks like the only real solution is to take it back into public ownership.

Sewage pumped into UK waters mapped as pollution leaves drains for HOURS

We certainly can’t allow the Tories to bail them out so they can keep their Chinese and Canadian investors happy.

This is OUR water. An asset that literally falls from the skies into Britain’s glorious rivers.

And it just needs to be collected, treated and looked after competently by sensible and conscientious guardians.

Nationalisation is a huge ask. It means taking on the debts that are drowning the inept water companies and trusting politicians to do a better job.

But at least we would have this precious asset back in UK hands - for Josh and for generations to come.

Rachael Bletchly