Water bill increase - can't people power win?

Davesquire

According to the World Health Organisation, water is one of three life "essentials" (sorry, but your mobile is not one of them!)
In the UK we have a monopolised water supply system, which benefits shareholders and bosses (I wonder how many politicians DON'T have shares in the monopoly they created - Kerrrrrching!).
We are looking at a massive increase in costs  this year for something that falls from the sky. Why? To pay for the fines and costs associated with the polluting practice of pouring sewage into our waterways? Because the top of the range car that the CEOs probably buy themselves each year has increased in cost?
Wouldn't it be better for this forum to gather a mass consensus to force the politicians to either open up to competition or re-privatise the water supply system? Or are we simply going to lay down, like the mute serfs we are, and take another hike, whilst watching our savings dwindle.
Views anyone?

oldernonethewiser

Davesquire said:

According to the World Health Organisation, water is one of three life "essentials" (sorry, but your mobile is not one of them!)
In the UK we have a monopolised water supply system, which benefits shareholders and bosses (I wonder how many politicians DON'T have shares in the monopoly they created - Kerrrrrching!).
We are looking at a massive increase in costs  this year for something that falls from the sky. Why? To pay for the fines and costs associated with the polluting practice of pouring sewage into our waterways? Because the top of the range car that the CEOs probably buy themselves each year has increased in cost?
Wouldn't it be better for this forum to gather a mass consensus to force the politicians to either open up to competition or re-privatise the water supply system? Or are we simply going to lay down, like the mute serfs we are, and take another hike, whilst watching our savings dwindle.
Views anyone?

Not in my bit of the UK.

Tony5896

My thoughts … re the last one it may not be possible, I’ve just never tried to stop them ..

How much is it worth to you for someone to collect fresh water and dispose of used water ? I did read somewhere it’s illegal to collect rain water from your own roof but that may not have been a uk based article, it was some time ago.

me personally paying 250 per year is a bargain, others may feel different regarding their cost.

I don’t recall anyone forcing me to have any utilities connect when I bought my home.

maisie_cat

If it was so easy and cheaper to convert "something that falls from the sky" into potable water we could all do it and save on water bills.
The water companies infrastructure costs a fortune, from collecting & treating water to dealing with consumers who put rubbish into the  system and then complain about rubbish in the system.
Our water company, Welsh Water, is a non profit but the water bills are not cheaper as a result, and 65p a day for unlimited potable water straight to the tap is pretty good value compared to other bills.

booneruk

I'm with Tony. We have safe water on demand as well as clean disposal of waste, and there is so much that needs to happen to enable that. It's not a huge outlay at all.

As for the "polluting practice of pouring sewage into our waterways". This has been happening since the sewerage system was first built - those storm overflow pipes you see on the news are not new things.

The additional strain being placed on the system by climate change & extreme weather events is pushing it beyond tolerance. Our bills will need to go up if the need for overflows is to be worked out of the system. I'd be happy to pay more, but similarly happy if the regulators get more teeth in terms of limiting dividends and forcing investment.

There's been a lack of action across governments for decades now. I wonder if we'll see anything solid in upcoming manifestos, along with an honesty about the cost.

sevenhills

Perhaps things could be better, have you thought about contacting the water regulator?

https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/

I believe not-for-profit organisations can offer good services, but they need to be well regulated. I don't believe real competition can work with the water industry.

Maybe try voting Labour later this year?

ghz

Not here to stand for water companies, but if treating rainwater would be that easy (technology, ways of downscaling options, cost, etc.) and if access to this resource would be evened out across the country or even the world, then centralized delivery networks and facilities like reservoirs would not exist. Not saying it will never be the case, but seems so far that we'd need to rely on the options we have today. And this is not due to big-water or so, simply because how things work, so i am with maisie_cat on this.

Now, if we are talking about whether it was a good idea to place actors on an oligopolistic market into hands of various types of funds and equity management organisations whose targets are not always around the benefit of their customers or service levels... well, that's a completely different question, and here, I am more with you. There is not a single other country in Europe that is even close to the levels of what we have over here.

Additionally, water is a scarce resource and while we're quite lucky in the UK, it might not always be like this. It'd be beneficial if society would understand this, so still puzzled how could we have rules and legislations that lets us switch back and forth between metered and unmetered billing purely for monetary reasons even if the possibility is there to measure use. We'd need people to understand their individual impact and encourage clever use.

Davesquire said:

According to the World Health Organisation, water is one of three life "essentials" (sorry, but your mobile is not one of them!)

Talking about communications networks and mobiles. Well, it is an end device of a basic infrastructure and an absolute necessity in the 21st century, and we need to get used to this. It is your wallet, secure document store, window to public services, medical screening device, travelcard, etc. You'd be surprised how these networks are being used even in places where other parts of essential infrastructure, like water supply, is not even close to ours.

freesha

I wouldn't want to collect the water, treat it, get rid of all the literal crap out of it, and put it back in my taps, for the price I pay.

Gas is also naturally occurring, but people don't seem to quibble over paying for that?

macman

What do you mean by 're-privatised'? It was privatised in 1989, albeit as a heavily regulated regional monopoly. The failure in the last 40 years has been in the inability of any party to enforce proper regulation via Ofwat.
No future gov't is going to commit to the huge cost of nationalising it, which could be as much as £90bn. The nine main water companies have collectively run up huge debts, thought to be as much as £54bn.
And it may fall from the sky FOC, but it doesn't get collected, stored, made potable, transported, and then treated and disposed of after use by act of God.