Nationalised water let us down in 1976 ( my Express article)

As a couple of our water companies let us down again and struggle to supply many tell me the answer is nationalisation.   They wouldn ‘t like the big increase in tax bills it would take to buy them up and put in enough investment in new reservoirs and pipes. They should also ask how did it work when it was nationalised? The truth is it was dirtier and there was even less water available when it mattered.

People are currently  grappling  with a few hot days as if they were something exceptional. We have had  hot summers in the past. A maximum temperature of 36.7 was achieved in 1911. In 1976 there was prolonged heat from 23 June to 27 August with a 35.9 peak on July 3. This year we had a very cold start to May with  frosts which went without much media interest. This was  followed by a few hot days and now a few more this week before the temperature subsides again.

In 1976 the much longer hot period combined with a long drought, lasting sixteen months from the previous May. It was the water shortage that did the damage. Crops failed , moors caught light, people had to severely cut back their water use just when they wanted to water gardens, fill paddling pools and take more baths and showers. The main feature of the weather crisis was it revealed the disaster of our nationalised water industry. All those who today think nationalising will make a difference should read the history books on just how bad the nationalised industry was.

It had failed to build enough reservoirs and failed to mend leaky pipes. As a result the UK soon ran out of water in the summer of 1976. All hosepipe use  was banned. In several areas of the country mains water was cut off. People had to queue to fill buckets at a standpipe in the street. Water rationing was introduced. People were told to put bricks in their toilet cisterns and to only flush occasionally. They were told to reuse water within the household, keeping the dirty water from washing for toilet use or for gardens. Individual daily use of water halved from 190 litres to just 95.

Water rationing was imposed on industry so plants had to shut down or run well  below capacity to live within their reduced water allocations. That had knock on effects on employment and overtime. Farmers just had to watch as their crops withered without water to irrigate. The economy took a nasty knock. The government panicked and appointed a Minister for Drought, which was bit like employing someone to give us a rain dance. The Minister turned out to be lucky, as the rains came in September and October to refill the almost empty reservoirs.

The water industry kept pumping raw sewage into our seas from our coastal towns, giving us dirty beaches and dangerous sea bathing waters . The industry kept up pressure on governments to carry on with this practice until the Conservative government in 1989 brought in a Regulator. That led to reporting the dirty secret and to some clean up.  The nationalised  industry did  not have the money or the will to expand the pipe network to avoid the need  to discharge sewage into rivers, or to keep more of the clean water it put into the system before reaching households. Every pound of new investment counted as  public spending, and the needs of the NHS or schools were nearly always a more important priority than water spending.

We need a better regulator to allow more investment by our present water industry whilst preventing  excessive returns to management. The best way to do it would be to allow water competition. We have a competitive gas industry with a single pipe into every home, and could do the same for water.