By Lucy Kenningham
Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. To be fair to the water companies, they continue to provide us with drinkable stuff out of the tap. Unfortunately it’s everything else they’re failing at.
Over the weekend, a City A.M. reporter took a trip to Whitstable for a sunny(ish) weekend break.
The beach was packed with families enjoying the first drop of Vitamin D they’d seen in some time. And the sea – thanks to parents yelling at their kids to not take another step – went largely untouched.
There is something tragic in an island nation’s consciousness when the sea has become a threat, but it became apparent this weekend that the stories of untreated sewage spewing out into our lakes, rivers and seas have changed the way we think about one of the very defining elements of who we are as Britons.
It’s doing some good for the local economy, admittedly. A souvenir shop has started flogging “Southern Water: Pumping shit into our seas” t-shirts. But even that is not really much consolation.
The state of our water infrastructure is a national scandal.
Over decades, asleep-at-the-wheel regulation of monopoly firms has allowed for a glorious combination of creaking infrastructure and higher bills.
Even now Ofwat is notable only by its absence. It is hardly surprising that calls are growing for the entire industry to be nationalised.
Now, it is highly likely that such a move would leave us in even worse shape, as well as doing plenty of damage to the UK’s reputation (such as it is) for having a stable commercial environment.
But private companies running monopolies must be held to a higher standard by regulators, and they must hold themselves to a higher standard too.
For better or worse, such companies are standard bearers for the private sector in the public imagination.
God help us.
