Water companies have paid out 51bn in dividends and built no new reservoirs in 30 years
I'm all for water conservation but before cooperating with any hosepipe ban I'll expect my water supplier to cancel/return all executive bonuses and confirm that they won't be paying a shareholder dividend this year.
Who's with me?
by Plane-Jello-3687
32 Comments
It’s not criminal and I want my strawbs, so fuck the lot of them
The water companies make me so, so cross.
And the energy companies too.
Oh and the TRAINS.
Maybe it’s my age…
Oh no, anyway….
I’ll believe it if it happens. Till then I’ll treat articles like this like I do most sensationalist news, ignore them.
How are hosepipe bans enforced?
If my Acer needs water, it’s getting water. These private companies should’ve built more reservoirs.
No I don’t think I will, I pay for the water I use and the water companies clearly know utilisation levels for each season so they should prepare accordingly and spend their profits on improving water storage and reducing leaks instead of paying out undeserved bonuses
I’m down to my last water butt. Bugger!
They don’t really bother me anyway because you’re still allowed to fill your watering can from the tap as many times as you want, just not use the hosepipe.
At least that was how it was the last hosepipe ban (I’m on the south coast).
I did install a water butt a month ago and it’s absolutely crazy how fast it fills up! 210l so around a weeks worth of water for the garden
What happens if everyone ignores it and we run out of water?
If you have a blue badge your exempt
I’m considering 3x new food grade IBC to harvest winter rain for next year….
Build all the reservoirs you want but we haven’t had rain in the east for a crazy long time
I have a 5L garden sprayer and just use that. Fill it up, sling it over my shoulder and then walk around and water whatever needs it. You can still use watering cans and drip irrigation systems too. There’s usually exemptions for things like new lawns, or people with a disability who would find watering cans etc more difficult.
How about fixing the leaks first? A country as wet as ours should not need to ration water ever.
Where would you stand legally if you used a hosepipe to fill a water butt, then filled a watering can from the butt to water the plants?
The tories and now labour are refusing to issue a windfall tax on these companies, neither enforce fines either. it’s beyond disgusting and an absolute disgrace.
I’ll do what a want and still use my hosepipe to water my garden or occasionally my bike.
No one enforces these things anyway. – imagine the plod knocking on and telling me off for using the water
**I PAY FOR.**
Don’t think I’ve ever heard of a hosepipe ban up here in Scotland, had to Google it and sure enough the last one was in 1995. I don’t really see the point if you’re still going to use the same amount of water just via a watering can.
Well what was the last 2 years. Of constant fucking rain for if one slightly dry month can cause drought warnings!?
Several quarries have been repurposed as reservoirs in Cornwall but we still lose far too much through leaks. As for those saying they’d ignore a ban, that might benefit your plants but there are more important things like drinking water and washing for the general population. I’m with you on stopping the bonuses for execs instead!
Buy a rainwater tank, collect rainwater.
Margaret Thatcher sold off the water companies back in the 80s and it was the worst idea. She is to blame for this. She was always money above the right thing to do. No way to share water across boundaries like elec and gas. Water companies became a way to produce money for the share holders. Disgusting behaviour.
Raise people’s water bills and then ban them from using water. Make it make sense.
I don’t water my garden anyway
The water companies have been trying to build reservoirs for years.
It is the state that has been turning them down, due to planning regulations and OFWAT regulatory determinations not the water companies. This is clear-cut.
The last reservoir built was Carsington Water in 1992 until Havant Thicket was approved in 2025 (due 2030).
Here are some reservoirs that water companies have asked to build but that have been rejected by the state:
Abingdon Oxfordshire. Over a decade later the government has just approved it in principle. But it isn’t actually *approved* yet – the development consent order is due in something like 2027!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-12651131.amp
Cheddar reservoir – rejected by OFWAT.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-30445294.amp
It’s worth reading that last one in particular. Contrary to what many people on Reddit seem to have as their mental model, private water companies do not achieve higher profits by holding back on building infrastructure.
The concession is a version of a Regulated Asset Base model. Simplistically, it means that the part of the revenue that the water company actually gets to keep is analogous to a management fee on the size of the assets they look after.
More infrastructure spending means *more* assets which means *more* revenue and profit.
*Water companies do not retain more profit if they don’t build a piece of infrastructure.* They entirely lose the revenue that would have funded the project.
For some reason Reddit water discourse seems incapable of understanding this basic point.
So water companies typically always propose more investment than ever gets approved. And for many years OFWAT saw its role as protecting the consumer from rising bills (aside: they were successful; water bills have fallen in real terms – this is now changing as political priorities have changed) and so in each regulatory period they would rank projects by need and reject many of them. Big expensive reservoir capacity for contingencies is precisely the sort of thing they could keep rejecting.
The BBC article is explicit on this point – OFWAT turned it down because of the costs it would add to bills.
Water companies take one look at regulatory determinations like that – why bother spending money developing a pipeline of reservoir projects if OFWAT refuses to allow them?
And repairing the F***ING LEAKS!!!!!
To be fair the lack of reservoirs not connected to the dividends. Thames Water has been trying to build one near Abingdon since the 90’s but the absurdity that is our planning system makes it impossible. This is not a defence of the water companies behaviour, just that this specific thing is not because of the millions they’ve dished out to shareholders.
They only introduce a hosepipe ban so that they can draw more water out of the system than normal-it’s the industry/regulatory trigger for being able to do that. It’s got nothing to do with saving water, sadly, and they’ve gaslighted us for years that it was.
This is your regular reminder that no major reservoirs have been built in this country since 1992. Since then, the population has grown by 10 million people.
There is just simply no earthly reason why a damp island in the Atlantic Ocean should have to suffer water shortages EVER. It’s just the same old story of no fucking investment in infrastructure in this country, as usual. Truly rage-inducing.
Of all the things we put up with, nothing annoys me more than a fucking hosepipe ban in a country where it rains for half the fucking year.
Been lining their own ~~pockets~~ duffel bags instead of putting a penny into retention infrastructure. I honestly want violence.
Thames Water loses 650 million litres of water *per day* through leaks.
They fucking disgust me. Cumbria’s beautiful & formerly blue flag beaches are now the dirtiest in the UK, all thanks to United Utilities habitual illegal sewage dumping. And they are absolutely destroying beautiful Lake Windermere – England’s largest lake. Filling it with sewage almost non-stop. As a direct result, toxic algae blooms further poison the water. Aquatic wildlife is literally being decimated. I no longer kayak there as the water is such a major health hazard now. Appalling:
*Six sewage overflow sites discharged untreated sewage into Windermere for 6,327 hours in 2024 alone. This equates to 263 full days of sewage discharge. Since 2020, those same sites have discharged untreated sewage for a total of 33,410 hours. A BBC investigation also found that over 140 million litres of waste was illegally dumped into Windermere by United Utilities between 2021 and 2023.*