I was prompted to reply to this posting :
Some basic perspective please. Fed up with these type postings which fail to acknowledge the completely disastrous and monopolistic utility provider system before privatisation. Before privatisation water was supplied in effect by the government. Repairs - renewals - were funded out of taxation. Consequently nothing was done. The system was Victorian. Totally broken. Leaks everywhere. Our rivers in a shocking state. No fish in the Thames. Sewage outfalls straight into the sea was the norm. Billions needed to be spent. The point of privatisation is you create a business that can borrow to invest rather than taxation paying for it. New capital. Of course investors want and need a return on their investment in terms of dividends and interest. Nothing wrong with that. Water companies have borrowed a lot - they have invested a lot. Billions. There was so much to be done and it costs so much. By any measure across the board our water / sewage system has massively improved from what it was pre privatisation. However there are still massive problems. Not every company has been run well. Populations have massively increased. We are building on flood plains. Environmental standards have rightly increased. Government require OFWAT to limit price increases. It is a massive challenge. One thing for certain if we go back to the bad old days - a monopolistic public utility - forced by governments to keep their prices down - politics - starved of capital for investment because it relies on tax allocation in the gift of government - politics - things will be much much worse. The only way is to incentivise private capital investment and manage it properly.
