"With every passing day, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that 40 years of water privatisation has been 40 years of disaster."
The Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay has said Thames Water must be taken into public ownership during a visit to Oxford Sewage Treatment works.
The ageing Oxford Sewage Treatment Works are currently being upgraded, but Thames Water has significantly fallen behind schedule. The work was due to be completed this year, but is now delayed until 2031.
Housing developers recently wrote to the government stating that these sewage issues are creating “a complete hiatus of development”.
The Environment Agency has now said development can go ahead, provided Thames Water begins upgrading the Oxford Sewage Treatment Works from 2027.
Earlier this week, the court of appeal published a decision upholding Thames Water’s £3bn emergency bailout loan.
Thames Water, which is already £19 billion in debt, will pay £893 million over six months in consultancy fees and servicing interest on the £3 billion loan. The company will also face a staggering 9.75% annual interest on the loan.
New data from The Guardian found Thames Water was responsible for almost 300,000 hours of raw sewage pouring from its ageing sewage works into waterways in 2024, 50% more than in 2023.
Since it was privatisated in 1989, the company has paid £7 billion to shareholders, while years of underinvestment have pushed its infrastructure to the brink of collapse.
Ramsay said: “For too long, billions have been leaking out to shareholders instead of going into fixing our broken water system. It is always water customers who are expected to bail out this failed model of privatisation through steep rises in bills.
“There is a better alternative. We need to bring water back into public ownership. That is the real change we need.”
Green Party councillor Jo Robb said: “With every passing day, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that 40 years of water privatisation has been 40 years of disaster. The public has had to put up with rip-off bills, raw sewage being dumped in our rivers and crumbling infrastructure.
“All the while, shareholders have laughed all the way to the bank. It’s nothing short of a legalised scam.”
Robb said that while Thames is among “the worst of the private water firms, […] this isn’t just a story of one bad apple.”
“The whole tree of privatisation is rotten. It’s time to end this rip-off. It’s time to take Thames Water and the whole water sector into public ownership.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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