In the past 30 years, water companies have reduced their investment in sewage work by one fifth. These figures are from Figures.
The chronic under-investment comes despite water bills rising 31 per cent and the £72billion paid in dividends to investors over the same period.
The claims come as the firms are under attack for dumping sewage into rivers instead of processing it – which critics say is because they have failed to adequately invest in treatment works.
Water companies are now facing a wave of anger – which includes customers withholding bills in protest at the repeated dumping of sewage in rivers and seas.
This analysis focuses on investment after 1989 privatization. And it shows that cash put into waste water and sewage networks fell by almost a fifth – 17 per cent – from £2.9billion in the 1990s to £2.4billion, based on data from regulator Ofwat and the campaign group Windrush Against Sewage Pollution.
In the thirty years that have passed since privatisation, water companies have cut investment by five percent in sewage plants. Photo: A stock image showing an Environment worker treating Yoxall’s River Trent after it became contaminated by untreated sewage, cyanide and other substances in October 2009.
Water bills have risen by 31 per cent in real terms since the 1990s and £72billion has been paid out in dividend payments to parent companies and investors, including private equity, sovereign wealth and pension funds.
Ashley Smith, founder of Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, said the data showed some parts of the water industry had ‘become heavily reliant on being able to get away with illegal sewage dumping to prop up under-investment in its infrastructure’.
And Martin Salter, of the Angling Trust and the former MP for Reading West, said: ‘There has been a huge increase in housebuilding and in population – we’ve built more houses and schools but do we upgrade our sewage treatment works to cope? No, it always ends up in the river.’
Julie Wassmer is a crime writer who withheld payment from Southern Water for its repeated sewage-dumping activities on the Kent coast. The firm was fined.
In a letter posted online that explained her actions, she said: ‘It cannot be right for criminal activity to be rewarded, for families to have been forced from beaches and out of the sea, for residents to have had to sweep sewage from a footbridge so that local children do not have to tread in excrement on their way to school.’
The country’s rivers are in a poor condition. In 2019, only 16 per cent of England’s rivers and seas met the minimum ‘good or better’ status, according to official Environment Agency figures. Pictured: Thames Water reported sewage on the Jubilee River in May 2020
She attacked the company and its shareholders for continuing ‘to make huge profits from all this, claiming high salaries and paying dividends to shareholders in the process’.
She added: ‘I am therefore exercising my consumer rights by withholding payment to Southern Water.’
The country’s rivers are in a poor condition. In 2019, only 16 per cent of England’s rivers and seas met the minimum ‘good or better’ status, according to official Environment Agency figures.
Water UK, which represents the companies, said: ‘The water industry is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country, with tight controls on company activity, including on the amount companies are permitted to invest each year.
‘We are pushing the Government to encourage the economic regulator, Ofwat, to authorise schemes that meet the Government’s environment targets.’