Here we go again: eight water companies have now introduced a hosepipe ban. Somehow, this rain-lashed island has once again contrived to run out of water for gardens while still flushing filth into rivers and seas. And yet, it rained for over a month in parts of the country earlier this year.
Nevertheless, in places like the spa town of Tunbridge Wells, experiencing multiple restrictions in recent years, such problems have become the norm. It’s difficult to see beyond a need to renationalise the water industry. That feels ever more like common sense – and, we should all be really angry about how we got here.
Let’s stop pretending this is a freak of weather rather than a failure of stewardship. It is a business model calibrated to sweat assets, underinvest in resilience and outsource the ecological bill to the public. Meanwhile, water bosses continue to pocket hefty pay and performance awards even as service craters.
In recent years, total boardroom packages including bonuses and long‑term incentive plans have added hundreds of thousands of pounds on top of base pay, despite fines, pollution breaches and chronic leakage. The dividends story is equally indefensible: billions siphoned to investors while pipes, reservoirs and treatment works age into crisis.
