Sewage spills UK: Six water firms in England 'overcharged customers'; we are paying for pollution and getting fleeced - it is disgusting
A tribunal has heard that six water companies in England have overcharged customers between £800m and £1.5bn - which is no surprise as privatisation is simply for profit.
In the first environmental competition class action against water companies in England, lawyers argued that the privatised firms had abused their monopoly position to mislead regulators over the amount of sewage they were discharging from their assets over the past 10 years. This allowed Thames Water, Yorkshire Water, Anglian Water, Severn Trent, Northumbrian Water and United Utilities, to charge customers higher bills than they would have been allowed to if they had provided the regulators with a true picture of their sewage pollution.
Professor Carolyn Roberts, a water resource specialist, is taking the action and seeking to represent millions of consumers who she believes have been overcharged by hundreds of millions of pounds. Julian Gregory, for Roberts, told the tribunal on Monday (23 September) that analysis of Thames Water data alone suggested the company may have failed to report more than 6,000 raw sewage discharges. And this is the water firm that wanted to raise average water bills by £18.99 a month – or £228 a year.
Roberts is applying to the tribunal for collective proceedings orders (CPOs) against the six water companies. If the orders are granted, the proposed claims can proceed to a full trial to establish whether water companies have been overcharging household customers. Customers would automatically be refunded millions of pounds.
Water firms fleecing customers and underreporting sewage discharges really does not come as a surprise - and it will not come as a surprise if the trial finds this to be true. We are already paying water bills despite firms continuously pumping raw sewage into rivers and seas. They are taking our money and not improving anything - nothing is being done to prevent sewage discharges.
All we hear is instead how shareholders and CEOs are getting paid huge sums of money. Thames Water, for example, is riddled with debt and wanting to increase customers’ bills. It is currently scrambling for emergency funding and warning that it will run out of money by Christmas. But in its most recent annual report, the water firm’s profit had increased to £75.4 million and the firm paid two fresh dividends worth £158.3 million in March to two of its holding companies, Kemble Eurobond and ThamesWater Limited.
Privatisation means that customers will foot the bill, pay the dividends, pay the water firms - all the while the companies release raw sewage into our precious waterways. Underreporting the true scale of sewage discharges just to ensure its customers pay more is outrageous and scandalous. It only gets worse and worse and its high time the Labour Party stepped in to stop the corruption and nationalise water companies.
A spokesperson for Water UK, the industry body, said: “This highly speculative claim is entirely without merit. The regulator has confirmed that over 99% of sewage works comply with their legal requirements. If companies fail to deliver on their commitments, then bills will automatically be reduced.”
But water companies have failed to deliver on their commitments and still bills are set to increase. For example, Thames Water, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water will be fined a total of £168m for failing to manage their wastewater treatment works and networks. Yet, regulator Ofwat has allowed firms to increase bills by 21 per cent a year.
We are simply paying for our rivers and seas to be polluted. Water companies are failing, as are the regulators whose job it is to uphold standards. How many more scandals are we going to hear to do with the water industry? I suspect a lot more. Nothing has changed. There needs to be accountability, a tough stance and re-nationalisation.