How can England possibly be running out of water?
308 comments
·September 6, 2025sandbags
autoexec
When it comes to things like utilities every penny of profit comes at the expense of the public. Either prices are raised so that a small number of people can stuff their pockets with extra cash above what it costs to deliver the service and maintain the system or they get that extra money by failing to deliver the service or they do it by failing to maintain the system itself.
I think the neglect and failure to invest in infrastructure is the worst because unlike high bills or increasing numbers of people not being served it's more or less invisible to the public while companies and shareholders rake in a lot of money, but doing that causes problems tax payers end up footing the bill for down the road, and it may not always be obvious to the public what the cause was.
A power company who makes profit by neglecting the condition of their power lines can cause a wild fire, but it takes a lot of time, taxpayer money, and luck to identify that the lines were the source of the fire, to discover that the company knew (or should have known) about the problem and done something about it, to get enough proof of those things that a lawsuit is possible, and to fight it out in court in order to hold the company accountable. It's not just the cost of fire the public is on the hook for in that case, but the costs of everything else too.
krona
> I think the neglect and failure to invest in infrastructure is the worst
Cumulative capital investment by water companies in England and Wales since privatisation: £250bn.
The infrastructure they inherited was never designed for the things it's being asked to do today, and it has a life expectancy. It would literally cost trillions to upgrade the entire sewerage system.
This isn't apologia, it's just reality. The road network will also face the same fate since much of it was built >50 years ago and has a life expectancy of roughly 50 years. The country simply can't afford to replace it.
michaelt
The thing is, if a water company is in good financial health, with low debt and lots of money to invest in infrastructure, it’s completely legal for private equity to buy the company, stop investing in infrastructure, take out loans until a third of customer bills go on interest payments, and take the loaned money as ‘management fees’.
Then dump untreated sewerage in rivers and demand more money from bill payers, because they “can’t afford” to maintain the infrastructure.
In most industries a company so poorly managed would lose customers, go bankrupt, and be replaced by a better run company. But water companies? They have a monopoly, and everyone needs water to live.
jdietrich
The regulator (Ofwat) also deserves a great deal of the blame. They determine the maximum prices that water companies can charge. Since the start of privatisation, they have prioritised low bills above all else and are proud of the fact that water bills fell by 45% in real terms between 1989 and 2020. The consequences are obvious - the supposed "efficiency" that pays for those lower bills inevitably means neglecting maintenance and reducing infrastructure investment. The short-term thinking that has led to this situation has been dictated by government, not shareholders.
As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, the planning system is also a huge obstacle to infrastructure investment, with numerous important projects being blocked due to spurious environmental concerns.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/687dfcc4312ee...
arichard123
But "investment" as the water companies define it is every penny not taken as profit. Staffing costs? Investment! Fixing leaks? Investment! So that figure sounds like money above and beyond, but I don't think it is.
bluecheese452
These systems were built at a time when the country was much poorer. It can afford to replace it.
runako
> The infrastructure they inherited was never designed for the things it's being asked to do today
I am not British, but this is confusing. Was private capital forced to take on the burden of privatizing the water system? Or did private investors err in their economic analysis? (Or did those investors just assume the problems would happen long after they personally had gotten paid?)
another-dave
I mean, all the more reason it shouldn't be privatised. If it only makes sense to have one of something (road network, water system) it's a natural monopoly, _and_ it's going to require large public investment to be maintained, why wouldn't you in-house the expertise needed to do that and avoid the shareholder dividends overhead?
master_crab
And yet we are still in this position in the UK. Flip the question: What were the dividends paid out by the companies over the same time period? Assuming they gave out $100bn in dividend, then we wasted money that should have been spent on more infrastructure.
KoolKat23
So basically that £250bn is a bullshit figure, how long is a piece of string? It sounds big but it's meaningless.
WillAdams
Powerful argument for such to be operated as co-operatives if ownership by a non-government entity is called for.
mhh__
By definition every penny of profit always comes at someone's expense but I don't think we'd advocate for nationalising Tesco's?
jemmyw
That's true, but supermarkets compete with one another on price and other factors. They are motivated to do things to get more customers. Yes, there are many cases where supermarkets have been bad actors, but that's solvable with competition regulation. Water service is very different, and the current setup in the UK seems pretty insane - you can't have competition on who supplies water to your house. People aren't going to move location because of the quality of the water supply until things get very bad. They are motivated to spend as little as possible.
You can set up a system where companies are involved in the delivery of water in a way that let's them compete. For example, national entity owns the pipes and needs to provide a given service, companies compete for pipe maintenance, IT services, etc. It's hardly difficult to think up a system that is mostly free market and better in every way than what the people from the UK have to suffer through.
drowsspa
Tesco's is infrastructure?
seanalltogether
The concept of reservoirs and emergency supply seems to be completely at odds with privatisation. What private company is going to spend loads of money to build deep reservoirs that are stressed only once every 5 or 10 years. None. They're going to reach for an immediate supply like a river or aquifer and then raise prices if those sources run low. It's insane to plan out infrastructure on the belief that private companies are capable of building such large buffers.
tome
I'm inclined to agree that privatisation is bad for long term planning, but the history of the Abingdon Reservoir proposal seems to be counter evidence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abingdon_Reservoir
Looks like Thames Water (a private company) proposed the development nearly 20 years ago, but it was turned down by the Environment Agency, a government body.
> Plans for a £1bn reservoir in Oxfordshire to supply more than eight million people over the next 25 years have been rejected by the government.
> Thames Water wants to build a site on four square miles of land near Abingdon to help ensure future demand is met.
> The bid went to a public inquiry but the secretary of state said there was "no immediate need" for such a site.
"Abingdon £1bn reservoir plan rejected by government"
zarzavat
Good find, I admit I had jumped on the Thames Water is Evil bandwagon, and for the record they are evil, but in this case they have been out-eviled by that other driver of British societal regression:
> Campaigners had fought the plan, claiming there was no need for such a large reservoir and that it would damage the environment.
> Leader of the Vale of White Horse Council Tony de Vere said: "We are delighted with this decision.
> "Local residents were very worried about the impact of such a large reservoir and we share their relief that the plan has been axed."
jamessb
The Oxford Clarion has had several posts about the proposed Abingdon damn:
https://oxfordclarion.uk/water-why-abingdons-mega-reservoir-...
https://oxfordclarion.uk/abingdon-reservoir-is-there-an-alte...
https://oxfordclarion.uk/abingdon-reservoir-what-are-the-ris...
https://oxfordclarion.uk/abingdon-reservoir-how-much-will-it...
blitzar
> Thames Water's computer-generated image of how the reservoir would look
We have come a long way in computer generated images in 14 years.
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epolanski
> It's insane to plan out infrastructure on the belief that private companies are capable of building such large buffers
You can make this a requirement by law.
qcnguy
We're talking about the industry that just finished Thames Tideway, fully privately financed? A project that will last for at least 100 years and probably longer? A project that was needed for decades but was ignored by government and only got built thanks to the private sector?
The idea private companies don't invest is just Labour propaganda. Another commenter has already pointed out your belief about reservoirs is wrong, as is the idea they wouldn't make other forms of investment.
And all this has happened despite the government imposing socialist price controls on the industry, a move usually guaranteed to kill investment!
bargainbin
It shouldn’t be considered a source of profit at all, attractive or not. Water is a fundamental resource for human life. We pay bills to ensure the infrastructure is there to provide it.
If the infrastructure isn’t there, we haven’t received what we paid for. Worse, without EU regulation these companies are now blasting sewage into lakes and rivers. Ofwat can’t do anything.
At this point I feel there’s no solution other than nationalising the infrastructure again and ploughing billions of tax payers money into yet another failed Thatcher initiative.
Of course that will never happen, because we’ve not had a government willing to make sweeping changes like that since Thatcher. Except maybe Liz Truss with her exceptional grasp of economics.
8fingerlouie
It's fine.
Water companies will build new resevoir capacity, but since the extra money they already bill your for, for maintaining the infrastructure, has been paid out to shareholders, it will of course require an additional fee on your bill.
At least that has been my experience with everything privatized in the past couple of decades. The private investors scoop up every bit of value, and when it's time to pay the bill, it's the customers that must pay (again).
Fortunately we have regulations in place, but that doesn't help when all value has been siphoned from the company and all there's left is debt.
davej
Here in Ireland, our water is a public service and we have similar supply issues to the UK (and a similar rainy climate). I'm not discounting your analysis and I'm sure there are lots of other variables but it's always good to compare other outcomes when discussing counterfactuals.
sandbags
It's a fair point that nationalised water industries can also be poorly run. But I'm not sure what the argument is that means the amount of money that privatised UK water companies have paid in dividends vs. invested in maintaining and expanding infrastructure isn't a significant part of the UK's problems.
However, as a further point. If national priorities change then a nationalised water industry can respond (relatively) quickly. But what can be done with a bunch of potentially foreign owned profit-seeking companies?
qcnguy
Paying dividends is good. It's how you attract the capital for investment without having to raise it via sale of government bonds or money printing.
The problem here is financial illiteracy - the alternative to paying dividends isn't that the same money all gets spent on the water network. Large scale investment is rarely funded from general revenues as it'd require spending years accumulating a huge cash pile that sits around doing nothing, and governments see such piles as pigs to slaughter. So the alternative is that the government borrows the money and then has to pay interest on it. From your perspective the UK "wastes" 8% of its spending on interest payments, and it's rising rapidly, but of course if it didn't pay interest then nobody would lend it money and all funds would have to either come from taxes or via inflation.
graemep
> Water should never have been privatised. At least not without a framework for a national strategy for water.
State ownership is not a panacea either.
State owned Scottish Water has more sewer leaks than the privatised companies in England and Wales do.
bilekas
The responsibility to look after the citizens basic needs such as water is on the government. Not private for-profit companies.
If they can't do their job, then we shouldn't pay our taxes ?
dukeyukey
You could say the same argument about food, but the system of privately owned farms moving food via privately owned logistics companies to privately owned grocery shops works very well. Yes, it's the responsibility of the state that it's citizens can acquire their needs, but that doesn't mean it has to be government owned.
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epanchin
The Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
Responsible for putting a pin in development and turning Britain into a museum, with insufficient water or power.
It should urgently be reformed.
mhh__
You're not taking into account how hard it is to get regulatory/planning approval to build anything in Britain.
Frieren
> Future generations, who will be dealing with long, dry summers, would probably be shocked at the profligate way clean tap water was used to flush toilets, water gardens and run washing machines.
Climate change means societal change. There was a time that Northern Africa was one of the best places in the world to grow crops. They were at the top of civilization for thousands of years. Climate changed, what people could grow and do changed too.
The difference this time is that we did this to ourselves. Even worse that we continue making our future prospects worse on purpose so a few oil countries can squish some extra money from earth. It is baffling the lack of foresight.
alt227
> we did this to ourselves
I would argue that a small minority of the human race did this to the rest.
> the lack of foresight
Everybody on the planet is well aware of what is happening and why. Its not lack of foresight, it is pure ignorance and apathy of those who are making money off the backs of these tragedies.
anon191928
that small minority have high IQ people or they directly fund and hire these high IQ people. So if our races highest intelligent people do this, there is no other to blame.
Some billonaires createded so many millionaires, some are even here in HN. Do they care ? no because they are "just" a tech people. how can rest with no money csn do anything if new rich people in 20-30-40y age range does not even care?
have you ever seen new tech rich high IQ founder groups actually care about climate? no instead they create new VC fund or investment club :)
SapporoChris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urinetown
An absurd satirical play. Due to extreme water shortages, private toilets are unthinkable, public toilets are managed by a corporation. Yes, it's pay to pee...
HPsquared
Flushing a toilet will always be cheap. Desalination costs somewhere around $1 per tonne of water.
chii
> so a few oil countries can squish some extra money
so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then?
tankenmate
although a good point, there is obvious surface level nuance though; oil companies hid the research of climate change for a decade or two, they also lobbied (and still do) against subsidies for renewable energy and for oil and gas subsidies (in development in most countries, and even end customer price subsidies in others). and of course there's further nuance below the surface as well.
Theodores
The research wasn't entirely hidden as they did not have a monopoly on it.
In the 1980s, as a child, I remember learning at school about the greenhouse effect, or whatever we called it then. It was not difficult to understand, and neither was the 'nuclear umbrella' that we also had to contend with.
In the mid 1990s I was working in TV weather. We self-censored ourselves regarding global warming, or whatever we called it then. None of us were paid by big oil.
The euphemisms for 'climate change' tell their own story, it seems we need to downgrade the wording for the inevitable catastrophe every decade or so, I think we are on 'climate emergency' now.
As a result of what I learned in school, I genuinely adopted a low-carbon lifestyle which was quite hard to do when everyone was going the other way. If you step inside a car (when you have chosen to not own one) then you are deemed a hypocrite. If you don't eat those cows that create so much methane then you will be called a hypocrite for owning a leather belt. If you read a book then you will be called a hypocrite since trees had to be pulped. Be green and those stuck in the past will get all passive aggressive on you even if you aren't preaching to others.
When all is done we could collectively blame the oil companies for obfuscating the evidence of climate change. Similarly, when all is done with the current genocides going on, we can blame the politicians or the media for not letting us know the truth. Yet we are all a few clicks away from seeing how our alleged enemies 'report our crimes'. Yet, consciously or unconsciously, we censor ourselves.
AlecSchueler
An interesting thing that happens here is also the conflation of company and country. You mention the oil companies blocking and obscuring the research, but GP was putting the blame on the shoulders of the "oil countries." Something to be aware of with the rise of weaponised xenophobia and general background islamophobia.
rhubarbtree
Too right, this is why I have switched to green hydrogen for my household heating. Sure, for now I’ve had to jerry-rig a hydrogen storage tank in my back yard and I’m piping the stuff over the roof, but I’m sure the govt will catch up soon.
I’ve converted my car to run on renewable wood pellets, stop moaning start fixing.
It’s all about individual choice, the oil companies are simply responding to demand.
My next step is to build a railway through our local high street so I can decarbonise my commute.
Take responsibility for your own actions, stop expecting governments to do everything for you. The oil companies aren’t the problem, you are.
derriz
Why hydrogen? It has an extremely potent greenhouse effect and is obviously the leakiest of gases - the leakage alone could make it more environmentally damaging than actually burning natural gas.
And have you seen how hydrogen burns or how easy it is to trigger an explosion? I wouldn’t live anywhere near a “jerry rigged” hydrogen storage facility.
abenga
Yes, the people are to blame. The only way this changes is if governments that believe it is an issue to be fixed are elected and actually work to attempt to fix the problem. Do you get the sense that such governments are gaining ground politically anywhere in the first world?
TomasBM
Sounds like real-life Factorio.
Frieren
>so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then?
- Ecologists and native-right defenders being killed in many countries.
- Politicians being paid off by corporations to fight against wind and solar energy.
- Newspapers paid to mislead the public.
But you blame the guys that cannot make ends meet and buys the only thing that they can afford.
Stop blaming the victims. This is something that needs to be solved at the state level, blaming citizens for the crimes of oil producers is false, morally wrong and unproductive.
To blame others than the oil producing companies that bribe politicians and lie to the public is just a stalling tactic to continue destroying the world while most people is actually trying to stop that destruction.
foxglacier
Instead of blaming oil users, you think the producers should restrict the supply to them, forcing them to reduce or stop their use? But you just said they cannot make ends meet - will they die if they can't afford or aren't allowed oil? How can oil producers do anything at all about climate change besides producing less oil?
noduerme
Meanwhile, the average lifespan in the UK has shot from 46 years in 1900, when the primary heating and power source was coal, to 81 years now. It's easy to forget how much worse things were before.
autoexec
I wonder what Sweden was doing differently
> Take for example this distribution of age at death in Sweden in 1900. You will see, that in 1900, life expectancy was 52 years. However, the median age at death (the age above and below 50% of the population die respectively) is 63 years. Although the life expectancy is only 52 years, an individual has thus a chance of 50% to live past 63 years. Thus, if you went across a Swedish graveyard from 1900 (I'm not sure if the data relates to people born in 1900, or mortality data from 1900, but this is not the point of my comment), you would see that more than half reached an age past 60 years. (https://old.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/zzy2bh/no_avera...)
nine_k
This is right. The discovery of antibiotics and many other medical advances somehow influenced this, too, though.
lofties
[flagged]
Kenji
[dead]
boomskats
This last year I've noticed a disproportionate number of burst mains water pipes pissing ridiculous amounts of water everywhere, with whole roads flooded for days, sometimes weeks, before Thames Water's subcontractors managed to get round to dealing with it. This has happened before on occasion, but this year I've seen maybe 10x more leaks than any previous year. Critical infrastructure is bursting in unison because it has been criminally undermaintained for over three decades in favour of dividends on profits from critical national infrastructure.
Articles like this, with subtle mentions of how it was all our fault and all the water companies were doing was prioritising low cost for the consumer, are the equivalent of 'were the nazis really that bad or were they just a bit sad and lonely', but national infrastructure edition. They exist only to soften up and distract public opinion so that we're less likely to want any of the people involved to be held to account.
braza
> People across England are already banned from using hosepipes, with more restrictions probable over coming months. > So how on earth did famously rainswept England, notorious the world over for being green and wet with our national symbol pretty much a furled umbrella, come to this? > The UK is one of the rainier places in Europe. Some areas are wetter than others > Water companies in England and Wales lose about 1tn litres of water through leaky pipes each year. The industry has said that about 20% of all treated water is lost to leaks. The water firms have pledged to halve leakages by 2050. > Meanwhile, the annual pipe replacement rate is 0.05% a year across all water companies
An honest request for enlightenment:There's the structural problem. There are the structural aspects of a potential solution. There's some mapping around the problem. Given that, why does the England government not provide a definitive solution?
As a former 3rd world resident, one thing that I noticed in Europe is that several basic problems do not have the right incentives or willingness to be solved, even if there are the "raw materials" in place, like capital, human talent, a need, and so on.
I know that some can think like the "Why Didn't I Think of That?" meme template [1], but I have been in worse places where you have several headwinds like corruption, lack of capital, etc.; I see that in England and in continental Europe you can see a lot of those "basic problems" happening and piling up. I wonder if those issues will be solved gradually or if those societies will need to have their “burning platform” moment [2].
[1] - https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/139781746/Why-Didnt-I-Thin....
psd1
Five-year election cycle, and the dominant party is very good at controlling the narrative
Selling public infrastructure lets you give tax cuts now, and you'll be long gone before people recognise that they are paying more and getting less. It's much like MBAs making cuts - you can boost the bottom line in the short term and be gone before the blame starts gathering
We have a fptp electoral process, which means there are a lot of safe seats in parliament. In battleground seats, a vote for the third party is effectively a vote for the first. People who want not-the-incumbent cannot choose which party they actually do want. I personally have been disenfranchised all my adult life, MEP votes excluded. (If I could change only one thing, I would abolish fptp.)
Moreover, like most populous Western countries, most of the electorate is not well educated on politics or economics; they get their political news from limited sources, and they don't seek information that challenges their prior beliefs.
These facts combine to reduce electoral accountability.
Having flogged the public infra, renationalisation is tricky. You either buy it back at market value, which means imposing a tax burden and playing into your opponent's electoral strategy, or you seize it and spook capital markets, which also plays into your opponent's electoral strategy.
pm215
At least in the UK I think you can at a high level map out some system level reasons why this sort of "public realm" problem doesn't get solved:
* the UK's economic growth has been poor since the 2008 financial crisis, so government resources from taxation have similarly not been growing as much as they used to
* demographics (more elderly people) mean that spending on pensions and healthcare has been steadily growing
* so the spending on every other aspect of government and other public-realm type things has been steadily squeezed: there are no resources for improvements on either the big scale or the small
* plus we have (like the US) a setup where many people and organizations have an effective veto or delaying ability on building things (houses, public infrastructure, etc), which makes fixing public infrastructure problems very expensive and time consuming.
As a water-related example of the last point: there's a proposal for a new reservoir near me which is classified as a "nationally significant infrastructure project". The timeline outlined at https://fensreservoir.co.uk/proposals/process/ started in 2022 with "pre-application consultation" in multiple phases, doesn't even submit the formal planning application until 2027, hopes to get a government decision in 2028, will not start construction until 2030 and might finally get the reservoir up and running by 2036 if nothing is delayed. And this doesn't account for the possibility of legal challenges to it which could add extra delay even if they are dismissed.
pjc50
> several basic problems do not have the right incentives or willingness to be solved
The corruption issue is still there, it's just much better disguised and kept away from the general public. Random individuals are not expected or generally safe to pay bribes to police in the UK; we imagine that's all there is to it. But at the higher levels all sorts of problems are not solved because there's a financial interest, or simply an establishment personal connection.
The Fujitsu/Post Office scandal was perhaps the worst recent example.
actionfromafar
Nothing can be fixed if it's always someone else fault. For a while it was the EUs fault. Then came Brexit. After Brexit, it was somehow also EUs fault, because the EU is mean or something. Also, blame immigrants.
hnhg
Short answer is that the UK gave private companies to extract as much wealth as possible with minimal re-investment in infrastructure. The nation has since seen water rationing and raw sewage being pumped into rivers and beaches, but at least some shareholders have benefited, right?
psd1
Well tbf, there is a regulator and there are price controls. They've been given license to extract wealth, but not as much as possible.
I do share your bitterness. Free-market fundamentalists have flogged assets for years, and the cost to the citizens is some future government's problem.
alt227
A regulator so weak that they have not been able to enforce pretty much anything, and are about to be systematically decontructed and replaced
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ofwat-to-be-abolished-in-...
elAhmo
Yes! Same with trains.
peterfirefly
Water meters work better than rationing.
walthamstow
> [England] While famously rainswept
I think you mean stereotypically rainswept. 25m people, >40% of England, live around London where it actually doesn't rain very much at all.
> The UK is one of the rainier places in Europe
Yeah, that includes Wales, Scotland and NI, where it really does rain all the bloody time.
psd1
Sure, the SE isn't the rainiest place in Europe, but it's not a dry region. So sure, not "very" rainy, but somewhat rainy.
The rain that falls across the Thames basin has historically been distributed relatively evenly across months, compared to regions with monsoon seasons. That makes management easier.
I do expect supply to meet current demand. And afaics, it would, if the pipes didn't leak.
foofoo12
There's this joke that in Scotland, if you can see the mountain tops then it's about to rain. If you can't then it's raining already.
BouffantJoe
25m is too high. London is 9m, South East England is 9.5 million
walthamstow
I included the East of England region which includes home counties like Beds, Herts and Essex. Any measure of "around London" must include Essex, surely.
alt227
IMO 'around London' is Greater London. If you mean the whole South East of England, then say that.
KingOfCoders
As a German, what amazes me, it seems like many people in England are on a water flatrate, as far as I understand it. No one (?) in Germany is.
fredley
Most water companies in the UK will not allow you to start a new flat rate tarriff though (and will definitely be applying pressure to those on a flat rate to get a meter). So if you move house chances are you will get a meter installed straight away if there isn't one already.
zipy124
I've never stayed in a place in london with a water meter, and I've lived in 5 places over 8 years. In addition we've tried to get one fitted multiple times, as it was becoming mandatory. None of the places I've lived in were able to have one fitted, as in large buildings fitting a meter for each flat is simply not possible, especially in old council flats.
olalonde
In most of Quebec, water is not billed nor metered. It's considered as a "public good" and paid for through property taxes. That does lead to overuse and waste though.
louthy
As a Brit, yes that’s true, I’ve never had a metered water connection.
kawsper
That surprised me too.
Flatrate is the default, but you can get a metered water connection installed if you want, and it is often cheaper than the flatrate.
bbrks
It's not the default. You cannot buy a new house today without being on a meter. That is the default.
It's just our housing stock being so old and decrepit, where nobody can be bothered updating anything even if it's provided for free by the utility companies, that the majority of houses simply do not have a water meter!
There's a general sentiment that smart meters and metered water will make costs skyrocket or somehow hold you ransom to abrupt and unfair price changes, as if that somehow wasn't the case today...
secondcoming
Except in Scotland where your water charge is added to your council tax and so there are no water meters.
I pay £190 per year for unlimited water.
padjo
Wait until you hear about Ireland where we installed metres but ended up not using them and instead everyone gets as much water as they want for free.
einszwei
Thatcher era privatization has been proven to be epitome of "short term gains for long term pain". Water, Power, Gas and Rail all privatized in a short span of decade and now the future generations will be footing the bill.
vixen99
Agreed!Two things here: 1. Totally deficient regulatory framework and 2. The argument for those on the Right or Left is - do those running the company bear the consequences of their actions? Do public servants? Almost never. We need water, power, roads etc., So define the goals for these and get people to run them (public or private) who will bear consequences for a F.U. Politicians almost never face the consequences of their decisions. If there was at least some linkage the future might be different. That is a fundamental problem with bureaucracy as well.
As a far distant example: Tony Blair sails into opulent old age as a 'respected statesman' having lied about weapons of mass destruction incurring the deaths of 150K - 1 million.
nvarsj
Don’t forget about selling off of NHS hospitals. I don’t think many people realize how much of the NHS is privately owned. NHS pays the owners for use of the facilities. It’s insane.
MrDrDr
This highlights one of the big problems with liberal democracies - how do you provide efficient (and even innovative) public services? There is no free market for many public services like water (and where there is I’m all for privatisation). But the people (I am in the UK) do not tend to elect a government on its ability to manage these types of services. I do wonder if there some other structure that blends a not for profit ethos with employee ownership and just enough competition…
Lord-Jobo
A triumvirate of Unions, government, and private enterprise are supposed to be balanced and keep each other in check the same way the three branches of government in the United States are supposed to keep each other in check.
And just as the executive branch has bloated into a monolith at the expensive of Congress, private enterprise has bloated at the expense of Unions (just as true in the U.K. as far as I can tell).
You have the two primary governmental/economic systems of balance failing in the same way, at the same time, both failing due to the actions of corporations.
This kind of failure may be common with liberal democracies but is not inevitable. We have simply been bad stewards and let corporations vacuum up everything with little resistance.
alephnerd
> I do wonder if there some other structure that blends a not for profit ethos with employee ownership and just enough competition
Legislate that certain public services are to only be managed and administered by the civil service managed and autonomous statutory boards. That's probably the easiest thing to do in a parliamentary system like the UK. Sort of like a "Water Management Board".
Not every function in a democracy needs to be democratic in nature.
Heck, this is how the UK managed colonial territories like Singapore and HK with the civil service run HDBs, and how a lot of the UK was run before Thatcher's privatization.
e-khadem
This is the classic answer to these problems, but I think these "non-profits" and "civil managements" are inherently problematic.
Let's say that John Doe is a very accomplished visionary individual, and has quite a few revolutionary good ideas around improving the water system. Obviously Mr. Doe needed lots of lab equipment to gain experience and insight into these systems, and realistically needs a lot more if he wants to live to his full potential and benefit the public. He is determined to work towards the greater good, but also needs a lot more power [than the average citizen] to test his ideas.
Therefore in order to [be able to] accept this role, he has to be well-compensated (as a one in the world person). Therefore the payment package must look a lot more like the CEO compensation or a high-end management position, which is contrary to the idea of civil management.
Said differently, money can be a good proxy of the power to bring about changes, and if we truly want to try radical ideas (as we should in challenging problems), we need powerful individuals that can risk [their own fortune of course], not committees of less powerful people best suited for maintaining the status quo. In other words, the average citizen is much too risk averse to accept (or approve the payment package of) John in this position, and this can lead to stagnation.
I believe a better way to manage these systems that simultaneously protects the public from adverse incentives and allows high risk high reward behaviour is a middle ground. For example a risk averse non-profit for day to day operations + prize systems + modest (not too big) government-run research facilities.
Fundamentally speaking, there is always a risk / reward tradeoff, and I believe the current society is too conservative and is missing out a lot of opportunities (compared to let's say the cold war or WW2 era). We need to somehow rebalance this scale to live near a better operating point.
alephnerd
> but I think these "non-profits" and "civil managements" are inherently problematic.
I'm not talking about "non-profits" or NGOs. I'm talking about legislating autonomous organizations within ministries with full autonomy and remit to execute on their jobs and only report directly to the Minister or the Permanent Secretary.
This is what Singapore does, which itself is based on the British colonial model.
At some point, too much democracy is delerious, and Tom, Dick, and Harry need to know their place. Not everything needs to be politicized and democratized.
> Therefore the payment package must look a lot more like the CEO compensation or a high-end management position, which is contrary to the idea of civil management
What country are you from? Even the UK has begun developing statutory boards like the FCA and SFO that pay market rate salaries for critical roles.
And until the Thatcher era, civil service pay was comparable or slightly better paid compared to other white collar roles.
FridayoLeary
That sounds like more quangos? I'm not an expert on them but the way people complain about them, they have a penchant for wasting fantasic amounts of money, and have no accountability even by the standards of the civil service.
Politicians are simultaneously engaged in a desperate struggle to close down the defunct ones while opening up more, because they are a great way to avoid responsibility, which of course is one of the major operational goals of the civil service.
alephnerd
Not like Quangos - Statutory Boards at least in Singapore are a part of a ministry, but they are given full autonomy [0] to recruit, administer, and manage within their remit as legislated.
Quangos are a half assed attempted at doing something similar while trying to include some "inclusion", but with none of the checks and balances.
The reality is, not every Tom, Dick, and Harry should have a say on water management or R&D prioritization.
[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_boards_of_the_Sing...
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bayarearefugee
Don't worry about it. Just lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy and reduce regulations, the magic hand of the market will fix everything!!!
:D
OccamsMirror
We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!
jameslk
What do lowering taxes have to do with water running out in the UK?
queenkjuul
Lower taxes can fix anything
bayarearefugee
[flagged]
jameslk
Does this snarky point you’re trying to make connect with anything in the article? I saw no mention of taxes
greyw
Last I heard the rich are leaving the UK eroding your tax base. Im sorry but it is going to be higher taxes for you all
CommanderData
Consumer: upgrade our waterways please? hmm maybe don't dump raw sewage every day.
Thames Water: pooposterous! we must pay bonuses, or it'll affect investor morale! Haven't you heard, your water is the best in the world, be happy :)
ndsipa_pomu
Thames Water: we need to raise bills to fund the infrastructure repair/upgrade
Consumer: grumble okay, here's our money
Thames Water: gives money to execs
Consumer: the infrastructure needs repair
Thames Water: we need to raise bills to fund the infrastructure repair/upgrade
autoexec
What sort of waste there is in industrial and agricultural use? It seems like the focus is always far too heavy on the individual household while corporate waste and excess tends to get ignored even while they lobby for less regulation and oversight
As the article mentions, privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources.
What the article doesn’t mention is that pre-privatisation a new reservoir was built every year up to about 1960 and then every few years until privatisation in 1992.
So we are about 30 years behind in adding capacity to the system. This combined with the inadequate levels of investment in the system leading to enormous wastage, is the answer.
Water should never have been privatised. At least not without a framework for a national strategy for water. I suspect that wasn’t done because it would have made water companies and unattractive source of profit.