Wash Out

Once upon a time, before privatisation turned the UK's water industry into a money-guzzling racket, the chief executive of a regional water board earned a perfectly respectable salary of about £41,000 a year – or around £110,000 in today’s money when adjusted for inflation. Not too shabby for a public servant overseeing a vital resource. But then came the great sell-off, that Thatcherite fever dream where essential infrastructure was flogged off to private interests under the delusion that competition would make things better, cheaper, and more efficient.

Fast forward to today, and what do we have? Not just an industry awash with sewage, but one drowning in corporate greed. The average water company CEO now pockets £1.1 million a year – that’s a tenfold increase even after accounting for inflation. And for what? What exactly justifies this obscene rise in executive pay? Are our rivers cleaner? Is our water cheaper? Have these corporate wizards worked some magic that eluded the humble public sector?

The answer, of course, is a resounding no. Instead, we get sewage-spewing monopolies, leaky pipes, and hosepipe bans while these CEOs wallow in bonuses and perks. The supposed efficiencies of privatisation have translated into deferred infrastructure investment, skyrocketing consumer bills, and an industry more concerned with dividends than drainage. Meanwhile, the public – that great unwashed (literally, if the water companies have their way) – pays through the nose for a service that’s arguably worse than it was before.

Privatisation was meant to bring competition and innovation, yet water companies operate as regional monopolies. You can switch your energy supplier, your broadband provider, even your bank, but if you’re sick of your local water company dumping sewage into your nearest river, tough luck. You’re stuck with them, no matter how much they pay their CEO to sit atop the sludge heap.

The real tragedy here is that water – one of the most fundamental necessities of life – has been reduced to a cash cow for the few at the expense of the many. And while politicians wring their hands and make empty threats about cracking down, the cycle of profiteering continues, with consumers left to pick up the bill, both financially and environmentally.

So, let’s call it what it is: a racket. A taxpayer-funded rip-off that sees the rich get richer while we get charged more for a service that was once competently managed by the public sector. If this is the great success story of privatisation, then it’s time to rewrite the ending – preferably one that involves bringing water back into public hands, where it belongs.