The head of Britain’s water regulator said it will take water companies to task over leaks and prices as the nation faces hosepipe bans.
“We challenged the sector to reduce leakage by 16 percent. The latest information we have says the 13 out of 17 companies are on track to deliver that in the first two years,” he added.
Black stated water companies in general were not offering value for money.
“The sector as a whole has underperformed against the price thus far into the period (2022).
“We feel companies have fallen short and we will hold them to account,” Black said.
British water companies are private companies that have regional monopolies on the essential resource.
Baroness Young of Scone has been critical of the regulators.
“The regulators have to be absolutely ruthless in controlling the price rise and profits companies can make,” she said on BBC Radio Four.
Punk rock singer, Feargal Sharkey, has become a campaigner for water issues. Speaking on the same program Sharkey complained of, “decades of under-investment and profiteering by water companies and the complete failure and mismanagement of it.”
“The truth is the failure of regulators has been tantamount to catastrophe in the environment and the shape of our rivers and lakes,” Sharkey said.
Cathryn Ross, strategy and regulatory affairs director for Thames Water, who is also a former CEO of Ofwat, admitted on Radio Four that the water networks at her company were poor but she defended her company’s recent record in trying to improve them.
“Leaks are endemic across the network,” Ross said.
“We have 20,000 miles of pipe so we are not going to be able to completely eradicate leakage but what we have done is over the past three years, we have reduced leakage by 10 percent,” she said.
The Epoch Times didn’t receive a response to a request for comment from Ofwat by the time of publishing.
