There are 3 ways forward for a company like Thames Water. There can be a deal between Regulator and the current shareholders and management agreeing an affordable investment programme and realistic customer charges Ā for the task. There could be a move to force a sale to new shareholders by undermining the current company, with a possible period of management by a government Administrator. There could be nationalisation.
Nationalisation is a particularly bad idea. Existing shareholders would need to be compensated for the enforced sale of their shares. State confiscation of the assets of the UK Universities Pension Scheme and the Ontario Municipal Pension Scheme would be contentious. To do so could Ā put off the many investors and supporters of private finance activities that the UK relies on. University teachers in the UK might Ā demand compensation for their pension scheme.
After deciding what to pay for the assets the state would then need to find additional money to increase the investment spend. It would all add up to a very large bill for taxpayers. In the past nationalised industries have also been good at running up large losses taxpayers have to pay. Current state enterprises, the Post Office Ā and HS Ā 2 have shown just how huge the losses and cost overruns can be.
Tipping a water company into Administration also comes with considerable Ā costs as well as reputational damage to the UK as a good place to invest. The special Administration of an electricity company was costly for taxpayers.
To those who think the company should be bankrupted and the debts written off and not met, I remind you that the government and Labour rely heavily in their forward plans on harnessing large sums of private capital to provide the extra homes, energy capacity, broadband and the rest we need. If the country got a reputation for stealing assets off investors and undermining businesses by unrealistic price controls and regulations that would get a lot dearer and more difficult to pull off.
The best way forward is a negotiated settlement between the company Ā and the Regulator. As most want faster progress with expanding capacity of our dirty water pipes there needs to be an increase in spend and in customer contribution. If we want more and better sewers then either customers or taxpayers have to pay more. As it is Ā the Ā same people paying VAT, Income tax and water bills I prefer it to be on water bills. There needs to be a clear link and financial discipline on water companies between revenue and renewal expenditure.
There is the added complication that Thames Water is owned by a holding company that now Ā says it has run out of money. Uk taxpayers and water customers should not bail that company out. It is not itself a highly regulated water monopoly serving UK customers. If they need to tell the shareholders they need to get more money from them or undermine their investment further then that is a matter for them which should not affect the UK state.
April 2, 2024
Indeed, but do we have a regulator who is remotely competent sensible and honest for a change.
April 2, 2024
No. And that’s where the rescue package needs to start, by sacking the current Ofwat management.
April 2, 2024
Not at all. It’s the Conservative government that’s spent 14 years letting companies like Thames pump sewage into our rivers while allowing its executives to take big fat bonuses for running a monopoly that needs sacking
April 2, 2024
If, as you claim, it’s all the fault of the Not-a-Conservative-Government then we don’t need the Quango at all then. Like every other Quango, the buck gets passed back to central Government when they are found NOT to be doing the job they were appointed to do.
So sack the lot of them.
April 2, 2024
The quango has no money, why negotiate with a regulator!! The company directors and CEO failed why are they not liable? Why has the regulator not been alive to what was going on?
JR,
This again goes back to your useless govt. who fail to ā¦.govern. Highly paid directors and highly paid regulator bosses being bailed out by the taxpayer! Outrageous. Ministers like the money, prestige, expenses, cars and drivers, kudos and jobs that come after but not any responsibility for failing the nation by their bad decisions, same for banks, same for water companies, BOE, councils etc etc. Those in charge getting highly paid with No consequences whatsoever! Post Office springs to mind, banks,TFL etc etc.
Cameron stated that no one in public services would be paid more than PM. Why not do this and make directors directly responsible for their actions? Set an example and make ministers responsible for their actions.
April 2, 2024
L,
Blind faith that private enterprise would shake things up and provide a better service. Public employees did not have the power to remove funds from the business, pay themselves huge salaries and bonuses. They just provided a steady offering.
Blaming the regulators to deflect criticism does not wash. Regulation has always been weak in this country. It’s a useful fig leaf. Look at other quangos as well. The serious fraud office have backlogs of cases and many failures behind them
April 2, 2024
yep …jobs for the boys, just don’t make waves!
April 2, 2024
Welsh govt. will extend govt.s minimum payment scheme to include illegal boat people being paid Ā£1,600 per month!! JR, this is our taxes!! Has govt. completely lost the plot?
How does dumb arse Sunak think he will reduce debt and debt interest when welfare is second highest budget heading?
April 2, 2024
Lemming, I saw an interesting chart in the Guardian on Thames Water Dividend payments over 32 years. Did you see it? There was a clear rise in payments from 1996, with a peak in 2007 and a clear drop since 2010. That coincides with the financial crisis after 2008, which put us in dire austerity measures to meet regulators’ demands, as otherwise, the UK would have faced financial ruin.
April 2, 2024
Much truth in this the Gov. should employ and oversee competent and honest regulation butcthis sems to be beyond them.
This Government is also complicit in Kahn’s evil ULEZ extension tax and the absurd and also evil Scotish law against free speach and stating the truth. They could stop both and should have done so. But choose not to.
April 2, 2024
Hope,
Yes, it is governments fault. They set the process in motion and just assumed everything would be alright without giving it too much thought.
ā Itās hard for a political party to admit the demise of an idea: easier to prop up privatisation out of sheer embarrassmentā¦ā to quote from an article in the press.
Probably even harder for Sir John Redwood, as a key advocate of privatisation. Not many on here seem convinced. I also wonder how many posts have had to be deleted to make a more comfortable read?
April 2, 2024
When Labour get into power all will be absolute perfection Lemming.
April 11, 2024
Sam, I seem to remember you saying āSarcasm is the lowest form of witā. What made you change your mind?
April 2, 2024
Agreed. No DEI or ESG candidates need apply!
April 3, 2024
I agree. There may also be a need to redefine OFWAT’s legal mandate, much of which derives from the EU Water Directives. These interfere with many things that should be done differently in the UK, such as inter regional supply. Investment priorities need to be re-examined. Thames should not be prioritising a net zero by 2030 goal when there is so much else to be fixed and when it is costly. Financial audit standards should at least be developed that recommend limits on gearing and minimum average duration of borrowing and exposure to interest rate risk and indexation risk.
The hiving off of responsibilities for water management to the Environment Agency has not been a success either. A return to local water boards with local knowledge might avoid future Somerset Levels, and be better tuned to manage pollution to the Wye.
Selling off reservoirs (e.g. Molesey) to build housing estates may help the Thames finances, but does nothing for water supply.
April 2, 2024
Non of the regulators work for the customers IFCOM being one of the worst. They hound GB News whilst the BBC pumps out endless left wing propaganda. The water regulator should never have let Thames take on so much debt.
April 2, 2024
Indeed OFCOM and the Government forced the media to lie about the Covid Virus, the Lockdowns and the net harm Vaccines. Thus suppressing any sensible and balanced discussions of things like the origins of the vaccine and the Barrinton Declaration. They are an evil propaganda organisation rather like the BBC, this has killed, injured and impoverished very many people. The endless lies on the net zero/climate alarmism topic from the BBC and other media and on the currency vavvine related excess deaths is pure evil.
April 2, 2024
They force GBNew have endless dim token lefties on for “balance” and very tedious they are too. So if you have 50% of people taking sense you have to balance it with 50% talking drivel. That elderly. lefty ex-BBC political editor for example and three or four rather daft lefty women too. One women on there even seemed to think she knows about energy storage and renewables. She even thinks that when you use a solar panels you are “storing” energy so deluded was she.
April 2, 2024
The lefties are even worse than the GBNew repetitive clips & adverts (for things I would never want) though the lefties (all raw emotion over brain people) can often be truly hilarious in their “thought” processes sometimes.
April 2, 2024
One guest said that 70% of the population were in favour of net zero.
Tell that to the virtually 100% people in ICE cars going past our house. Very few bicycles.
April 2, 2024
IW :
The news and current affairs employees, and others, at the BBC are Marxists masquerading as journalists who simply wish to wreck our economy with Net Zero and stir up trouble wherever possible.
For instance, how can they support feminism, LGBTQIA and Islam all at the same time?
April 2, 2024
I don’t know why Thames Water got into trouble. Was it bad management? Was it in part Government regulation? If the latter it should not take long to work out how regulation could be improved. I have done several such studies. Improving regulation, if that was a factor, would enhance the sale value. Either way bidders should have to show to the government how they can do better in future and the tariff structure they would want, and also whether and how they think changes to regulations would improve the service.
Reply The Regulator fixed the prices and decided the investment programme
April 2, 2024
Reply to Reply
If the regulator mandated key business decisions, such as what to charge for services and what to spend on fixed assets, then who is responsible for the business condition it now finds itself in? Would you take responsibility for a business that an outside political appointee had the authority to make such decisions?
April 2, 2024
Peter
Indeed, if a regulator has such power over expenditure, charges and investment, then the people in charge of the Regulator (I assume the Government) are responsible for the business, it is not a Commercial business at all !
April 2, 2024
It was simply asset stripping in the old way. Where are the original owners now? Made their pile and disappeared. Investors think that a previously nationalised industry sold off cheap and being a monopoly will be a licence to print money. If Thames are allowed to get away with it and not pay any forfeit (either producing more money or going bust) that will only confirm this view. I expect it will follow the same pattern as the banks, too big to go bust and be put back into profit at the expense of the British taxpayer before being handed back to the same profiteers. All JR’s solutions are a bad deal for the British and should never have been allowed to develop in the first place. Government are no good at running nationalised industries and they certainly are no good at regulating private ones being either complicit in what happens or asleep at the wheel. JR blames the regulator. Who regulates the regulator and who appointed such useless people in the first place? Privatisation of water was a terrible idea, but don’t expect any Tory to agree with that, they’d rather the British tax payer was cheated.
Reply Nonsense. I want the best deal for the public. That is why I recommend private capital AND competition
April 2, 2024
The best deal for the public would have been not to let it happen in the first place. Nationalisation of water was a terrible idea. Most of the others have hardly been a notable success either have they? Just dogma rules. Privatisation might have been better had it been done properly, not just to get it done at any price.
Reply I am glad we agree nationalisation was a bad idea
April 2, 2024
Would be nice if a few more MPs and people working in the state sector actually wanted the best deal for the public. Currently we have the highest taxes for 70+ years and dire public services. 250 excess deaths a week due to just delays in A&E it seems even more from negligence. Police who do virtually nothing about burglaries, muggings, shop lifting, most assaults…
April 2, 2024
Graham1946,
ā Government are no good at running nationalised industries and they certainly are no good at regulating private ones being either complicit in what happens or asleep at the wheel. ā
Indeed. Government are completely useless at controlling private ones. There is less scope for disaster with nationalised ones. Underfunding is a worry rather than asset stripping. Strikes was the big issue but strikes happen in private ones too, as the situation in the railways demonstrates.
Reply On the contrary. The nationalised Post Office has lost all its asset value and now has a balance with net assets of minus Ā£799 million.!
April 2, 2024
Did all water companies get the same parameters ‘The Regulator fixed the prices and decided the investment programme’ including the still nationalised Scottish and Welsh water and how did they all do in comparison within the parameters?
April 3, 2024
The EU Water Directive means that wet Scotland and Wales aren’t allowed to build new supply for England. Only the historic aqueducts are permitted. The playing field is not level or competitive: such supply would almost certainly be cheaper and more robust against drought that more extraction and recycling by e.g. Thames.
April 3, 2024
Thats very interesting Mark, why did the EU block that and now we are out of the EU could it be overturned?
April 2, 2024
Someone’s got to pay for the conveniences we enjoy each day. It’s either the taxpayer or the customer or the taxpayer and the customer but always remember the state’s the parasite not the companies bringing water and bread to your door each day
April 2, 2024
You obviously don’t understand what has happened here and seem prepared to accept anything private industry throws at us whilst always seeing Reds under the bed. We do pay and are willing, but not prepared to accept cheating the system just to enrich foreigners whilst our own country has food banks and cannot afford to heat their homes in winter. Do you care about any of that?
April 2, 2024
Maybe Thames Water customers haven’t been paying enough for their water and drainage services.
I think I read that their bills are around Ā£450 per year.
My bill from United Utilities this year is Ā£940, so maybe the bills for Thames Water customers need to be at least doubled.
April 2, 2024
MWB, Have you got a water meter?
April 3, 2024
Reply to replies,
No I haven’t got a water meter, and no I haven’t got my own exclusive supply.
My water comes from the Lake District – Thirlmere, Haweswater and Windermere.
April 2, 2024
We haven’t got a meter and pay close to what to pay! and we are surrounded by f…in’ water!
April 2, 2024
As an old-time Londoner I always associated MWB with the Metropolitan Water Board. Do you not have your own supply?
April 2, 2024
In the light of what you have written, I agree nationalization would be bad: better would be the State acquiring Thames from its administrator for the consideration of Ā£1. (As for any bleating from shareholders, their alternative is to fund a rights issue if they think their asset worthy of throwing good money after bad: how dare they look to taxpayers to underwrite their folly!)
But what is this about Ā£14 billion of debt that āThe state would have to honourā? So some quango stood by whilst debts were run up to those extravagant levels in the full knowledge that there was, de facto if not de jure, a sovereign guarantee? No need to ask what the irresponsible Minister was doing meanwhile!
Forensic accountants should now trace all intra-group cash flows with a view to lifting the corporate veil to recover any sums disbursed by Thames where there was not corresponding receipt of fair value.
April 2, 2024
If this company were to go bust it would show that the UK was a good place to do business. Good companies thrive and bad companies go bust.
As you ask, who guaranteed Ā£14 billion of loans? And if the taxpayer is already on the hook for this we might as well buy the assets of the administrator for Ā£1.00
How did the regulator allow this to happen? To defend the privatisation on monopolies the government needs to have proper regulation that prevents poorly run businesses and profit taking and ensures investment out of current revenues.
April 2, 2024
You’re asking the right questions about an irresponsible quango, F57. Here are the people you’re talking about: https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/about-us/who-we-are/. The non-exec directors have experience in such as areas as er, HS2 and other water companies. Just the right people to act as regulators serving the public interest and checking on prudent expenditure of money?
April 3, 2024
I suspect there are two main sources of poor value. Investments in new facilities that were made unnecessarily costly by delay (planning, covid, etc.) and regulation (including net zero), and high risk financing that assumed that ZIRP/QE would continue to suppress interest rates and inflation. The latter was plainly an assumption at OFWAT too, at least in so far as they even thought about it.
April 2, 2024
The technical term for what your government has achieved in this case, and the rest, is FUBAR.
You don’t want to upset the foreign and UK university shareholders but at the cost of saddling UK citizens with debts and poor service.
UK citizens whose votes are now being chased by the same government.
Do these teachers know that the dividends paid to their pension schemes were generated by converting UK assets into debts?
I am fed up of this litany of corruption and incompetence with no penalties or significant consequence to either the corrupt or incompetent, just mounting debts to us.
The best way forward has to include removing the ability of shareholders to use debt to finance dividends as well as limit what increases can be heaped on customers.
And any public employee involved in the financial scam should be stripped of job, pension and pretty “honours”, and barred from public office and employment
Reply The shareholders have not been getting dividends. The company has been paying interest on its debts just as taxpayers are paying huge interest bills on state debts in part built up by nationalised industries
April 2, 2024
Dividends have been paid while the company was private rather than building up an investment reserve fund as they knew they could borrow the money. Dividends should not really be paid out of future investment funds, that is asset stripping. Perhaps debt interest could be taxed rather than attract relief.
April 2, 2024
@Reply Apparently they were mounting up huge debts and paying dividends beyond their operational income up till 2017, the issue is the financial structuring created to enable that now persistent debt at our cost, it didn’t happen by accident and It was not to provide a better service investment or provision.
From a customer and taxpayer perspective there is no clear difference in outcome between a nationalised water board and a greedy monopoly, except where all the money goes.
April 3, 2024
The financial structure of the Kemble Water Holdings Ltd group is modestly complicated. Thames Water is 100% owned via various intermediate holding companies, some of which own other companies that supply debt financed funding to Thames, some of which is nominally shareholder equity in Thames. The money to pay the interest on the debt in the holding companies comes either from their share capital from a senior holding company or from dividends passed up from Thames. The only dividends paid to external shareholders come from the parent company. In reality, dividends from Thames have been used to pay debt interest even when the parent has paid no dividends externally.
It is necessary to look at the parent company group consolidated results to see the overall picture.
Reply Thanes Water has needed borrowed money to invest and sustain its assets. I have never said bail out the non regulated holding company. The issue is which is the best value way for bill payers and taxpayers to pay for the Thames investment programme going forward.
April 2, 2024
You didn’t seem to prefer the direct customers carrying the cost when it comes to the London super sewer.
April 2, 2024
Sir John,
As always you make well thought out and sensible points.
What I think is that, the company has got a lot of people’s backs up by the way they’ve tried to blackmail us with their demand for a forty percent increase on water bills.
I would like to know just how much they’ve paid to their shareholders in the last few years because, this current set of problems seem to be ongoing and haven’t happened over night.
The problem with any increase for a specific reason is that they never take that increase off when the problem is cured indeed, when they’ve done it once, say with the additional charge for London’s super sewer, they will try it on again, as is the case now in order to cure the”From the river into the sea Thames Water’s Poo and Pee. ”
Reply No dividends since 2017
April 2, 2024
āReply No dividends since 2017ā
The damage was already done by then.
April 2, 2024
Yes. Its paper is effectively junk. Put it out if itās misery.
April 2, 2024
I may be old fashioned but when losses are made the owners take the hit. Borrowing money year after year building debt should have been stopped by the Regulator and hence Government.
April 2, 2024
What interest are they paying on the debts and to whom. What are the salaries of the top staff?
It seems Thames Water is paying its new boss an annual salary worth Ā£850,000, on top of Ā£102,000 in yearly pension payments, and a Ā£15,000 car allowance. He is also eligible for an annual bonus worth up to 156% of his salary ā or Ā£1.3m ā that could swell his total pay to Ā£2.3m.
Meanwhile bright & hard working junior doctors often get paid under Ā£34K.
April 2, 2024
Above you make the public / private case and yet want public sector doctors to be paid more. Where is the competition for salaries?
April 2, 2024
Basically it seems the current shareholders bought a pup. The Australians sold their final stake in the company in 2017. Who did the due diligence?
April 2, 2024
It was a ripper….as the Aussies might say.
April 3, 2024
I would actually have preferred to see bigger dividend payouts corresponding to a rather larger chunk of equity finance, giving shareholders more skin in the game and reducing the gearing of massive levels of debt finance. The financial engineering to try to keep the current cost of debt interest low has resulted in the issue of large amounts of floating rate notes and RPI indexed debt, which has blown up with the end of ZIRP and high inflation.
April 2, 2024
So you want me to pay Thames Water more. I’m already paying them about 50% more than in 2016. How much more did you have in mind, Sir John?
Reply How quickly do you want big new sewers?
April 2, 2024
As quickly as the shareholders can fund it.
April 2, 2024
Reply to reply
Why ARE they complaining in Brighton? ( Much sewage everywhere..reported in paper).
Is the thing there a Super Sewer or a Storm Drain ( whatever the name).
Or are the complaints a political move towards nationalising?
Will the London Super Sewer actually work?
I am becoming obsessed with sewers!
April 2, 2024
Don’t let your obsession go too deep.
April 2, 2024
Wellā¦at least 70m I suppose?
But I must resistā¦it is a very unpleasant obsession as obsessions goā¦.
April 2, 2024
So nothing to do with the vast population growth your government has enabled contrary to manifesto,promises?
April 2, 2024
Big new sewers should be financed by the developers that generate the need for them.
I suspect though the government would see that as a disincentive for foreign investment, so they decide to saddle the British taxpayer with the cost.
April 2, 2024
A very good point, Dave. Unfortunately in Wokingham Borough, Thames Water tell the Council they can cope with the existing sewerage, and of course the council don’t ask questions, do they?
April 3, 2024
Thames should be told to ditch vanity green spending, and concentrate on the important things. Trouble is, the mindset of Parliament, as revealed by the Energy Act is to put Net Zero first above everything else.
Let’s get the priorities right first and then decide how quickly we want to go in the light of what is a feasible timescale and of cost.
April 2, 2024
I would much prefer that āthe country got a reputation for stealing assets off investorsā than it had a reputation for after the fact underwriting commercial risks to hold investors and capital providers harmless when it has no obligation to do so. If it has an obligation, it ought to have been receiving fees at market rates for the insurance it provided.
No other water company, all governed by the same regulator, seems to have met with āunrealistic price controls and regulationsā. Why has Thames alone?
The country does not have to rely upon international investors funding infrastructure, particularly not where it back-stops all risks with taxpayer-funded bailouts if things turn sour for those investors, when the Treasury can just issue bonds and the Bank of England can buy them. Cheaper and easier in the short run and it seems the long!
April 2, 2024
What if the deficiencies in the current system were dealt with by government and civil engineering companies on agreed fixed price contracts, overseen by a new body of civil engineering auditors. The civil service should be kept beyond arms length.
The two deficiencies are
1. Periodic lack of water.
2. Current lack of sewage capacity.
The answers are
1. A national water grid owned by government who charge for supply to water companies who fail to maintain their own grid or invest in water capture, retention, and desalination. Combined with a water watchdog with teeth and charged with the end users interests we might get a reoriented water industry.
2. Goverment owned sewage facilities put in place and run at a profit, where water companies have historically chosen the pollute and be damned soft option. Again run by professional management not a quango or the civil service, whose speciality is the creation of excessively priced detritus, not its erradication.
A question for scientists and civil engineers. Can all the detritus created at sewage farms after water purification be turned into a viable fertilizer product to answer agricultural needs. With its current drug content it could be marketed as “Happy Fertilizer”. ,or an abreviation.
The last helpful gesture government could perform would be to stop importing legal and illegal immigrants who use ever increasing volumes of water and produce ever increasing volumes of detritus, combined with all their other demands on infrastructure.
Reply Everyone wants an instant no cost solution. There isn’t one. A new nationalised industry would need higher prices to put in new infrastructure faster and would still take years to build all the new pipe networks. The nationalised businesses would also need to add to state debts. I have been advocating a big cut in legal migration.
April 2, 2024
The proceeds of privatisation would have contributed those funds to make the improvements. Or the float price could have been adjusted and improvements been part of the IPO.
April 3, 2024
The funds of privatisation went to reduce government debt. The privatised companies secured further funding through borrowing and retained earnings and further share issues, which allowed a huge increase in investment compared with the many decades of underinvestment by government that had left sewers and water pipes in decrepit condition. Water charges were increased to some extent, but not enough to fund the recent heavy investment by Thames in particular. Some of that investment is vanity net zero oriented. Some was more costly than it should have been due to government regulation, planning and covid delay. Financial engineering to appease the regulator with short term saving on financing cost has rebounded now that costs have ballooned with high inflation and interest rates.
April 2, 2024
Reply to reply.
You overstate the nationalised industry bogey. In my plan the water companies pay for government grid and sewage facilities when they use them.
You may not know this but government already runs an aviation fuel pipeline from refineries to all our strategic airfields. This was so in 1956. I imagine that now all our major civil airports are on this fuel grid. It used water plugs to separate different fuels.
Exactly the same could be done for water to balance supply and demand. You would also obviate the need to create resevoirs in agriculturally intense areas. The cost could be balanced with charging water companies for water supplied and putting an end to annual hose pipe bans. This could be the first nationalised industry to become a profit centre. The second could be sewage. Shed your civil serpent can’t be done, stuck in a rut mindset and think Isombard Kingdom Brunel ,enterprise and profit. Westminster reeks of can’t be done, that is why most of you are on your way out.
April 3, 2024
The pipelines were privatised in 2012, now trading as Exolum. There were also a number of other privately owned oil pipelines, some with shared ownership, including lines from Fawley and the Milford Haven area.
April 2, 2024
@Reply – Action should have been taken when it didn’t need an instant solution and a sudden demand for a 40% price increase is not the mark of competent or customer focused management, regulator or government.
April 3, 2024
This has been brewing for a long time, as can be seen by looking at the historic accounts. The regulator has ignored the problems, some of which are definitely of its own making. It really should be for the regulator to warn the government where there are needs to change the legal basis of regulation. I think the management of 15 years ago was of higher calibre than the present crew, and were avoiding trying to expand the asset base too fast.
There is a great temptation for companies regulated based on a limit to return on assets to try to grow the assets on which a return can be earned (see National Grid for the prime example, where Net Zero will allow it to multiply its assets several times).
April 2, 2024
Perhaps the Water Regulator should be put up for Questions and interviews, given it would seem they control the investment and pricing limits.
I am getting absolutely fed up with no one from a whole series of Quangos being held responsible, for a whole raft of failures.
Banking failures, Insurance failures, Water failures, Electricity failures, Environment flooding, etc etc the list seems endless, (Not to forget the NHS) yet no one is taking them to task for the list of endless failures whilst they continue to pocket Ā£ millions in salaries.
Scrap them all and make Ministers take responsibility for their own Departments, especially as they are now having to answer the difficult questions whilst the real culprits who oversee these organisations hide !
April 2, 2024
Yesterday I saw a report (in The Guardian) saying we could face hosepipe bans this Summer. I hoped it was a rather pathetic April fools joke, but I’m not sure.
We’ve just had, and continue to have, one of the wettest periods ever recorded ……………
April 2, 2024
The Government imported almost a million more people into the country last year.
Since 2010, when Lord Dave of Greenshill Lobbying became PM, the population has been increased by more than 6 million people, almost all the result of immigration.
During that period, NO new reservoirs have been built. In fact, no new reservoirs have been built for over 3 decades, so when you factor in the mass immigration of the Blair years as well, the reservoir provision of 1997 is now having to cater for an additional 10 million people.
But the Government continues to import as many people, as quickly as possible, and makes absolutely no infrastructure or public service improvements to cater for them.
It doesn’t matter how much it rains if you don’t capture the water.
Reply I agree and have been pressing for a big new Thames reservoir for years. The rumour was the Regulator would not allow it in the capital programme.
April 2, 2024
Reply to reply: So what happened to the proposed water transfer scheme. Did
(a) the geniuses at Ofwat block that as well;
(b) the Not-a-Conservative-Government refuse to fund it, or
(c) the EU Environment Regs put a block on it?
April 2, 2024
Spelman made clear when Secretary of State under Cameron that reservoirs were banned by EU environment rules, regs and leakages were the main focus!
Come on JR, tell us the truth whether your govt can now build reservoirs or does the EU environment laws, regs and rules prevent us?
Sunak sold the nation out with his Windsorās vassal state agreement where UK is forced to act in lockstep, give away N.Ireland etc. you are all still rallying,around,Sunak instead of giving him the boot. I am unclear why you raise issues with one hand knowing you successive govt.s do not even fulfil their manifesto promises like immigration- it is not a matter of you advocating but your party acting dishonestly never having any intention of cutting immigration. The record shows a dishonest party over many issues.
April 3, 2024
The EU Water Directives are still the heart of our water regulation. It was about at the top of my Brexit freedom list to disapply them.
April 2, 2024
Reply to reply:
But not pressing hard enough with total conviction. Always very gentlemanly and thus more easily ignored. With this and with other issues.
April 2, 2024
@Reply – so who is the regulator answerable to, who should have been holding the regulator to account?
April 2, 2024
Finland’s population is under 6 million. Just about the same as the number net that the Tory’s imported since 2010. How on Earth can anyone believe a Tory manifesto promise whist still importing over a million a year even with the latest inadequate policy changes ffs and FUBAR!! Of course these numbers effect health, housing, education, welfare provision, congestion, culture, heritage, values, religion and woke driven politicos! Reform to save us!! English people desperately need representation before its too late!
April 2, 2024
Mass immigration policy was the intention of the Tory party while lying to the opposite to get elected there is no doubt about it. The govt. does not control who leaves therefore the 3.5 million welfare claimants allowed in without knowing who might leave. That is how outrageous it is. For all the govt. knew no one might leave, their numbers are unreliable estimates in any case and are not reliable bona fide figures. I suspect they are plucked from thin air.
People need to wake up. Tory Mass immigration over 14 years is to rid us of our nation state, culture and way of life. The laws introduced by the Tory party are to silence and stop dissent against them changing our nation for good. Uni party are one they want the UK regionalised as part of the EU. Tory party has actively sought to betray the nation and public to leave the EU. Tory party must be obliterated.
April 2, 2024
It happens every year, a very wet winter/spring, followed by hosepipe bans….and still new reservoirs get refused.
April 2, 2024
Indeed are grey water schemes for loo flushing with second hand water or roof run off water cheaper than a new reservoir I wonder (per cubic Metre saved)?
Daily long hot power showers seems to be leasure activity for many young people I notice. Perhaps I need to put coin slot machines on them! What does a 10 minute hot power shower cost in water and gas now I wonder.
April 2, 2024
I see. Your ‘best solution’, SJR, is more of the same. The regulator rolls over, the company carries on doing whatever it wants, this time with even more of the public’s money gouged out of us, and all will be well.
I would challenge one of your assumptions, for a start. When she privatised it, Margaret Thatcher wrote off the water industry’s Ā£5bn debt. I don’t recall a collapse of confidence in the British business environment as a result. It therefore doesn’t seem right to assume that the same couldn’t be done this time.
Reply It was state owned with state debt!
April 2, 2024
JR, our tax itineraryās show first NHS at 19.8%, second welfare 19.6% and debt interest third! Your party keeps on giving to these out of control sections of our budget for nothing in return!! NHS not reformed by gets more and more money with NHS chiefs utterly useless! Welfare grows with your mass immigration! And debt and debt interest increases hugely with utterly stupid moronic spending by your govt.! You give China and India overseas aid, despite human rights abuses, coal fired power stations, while allowing them mass immigration here! Sunak, a genuine dumb arse, lies to say his plan is working! He ought to have known his school boy errors cost the taxpayer Ā£12 billion, he ought to know mass immigration of welfare claimants will increase welfare budget, debt and debt interest and he ought to know giving NHS more money will be wasted! If he thinks and allows China and India to be given overseas aid and allow mass immigration from both he is truly thick. What sort of workers does he think China will give us other than spies? Their dross?
April 3, 2024
The government got the privatisation proceeds to reduce government debt by rather more than Ā£5bn! The water industry had to arrange its own funding.
April 2, 2024
Far too late to change now without much gnashing, wailing and suffering but this all seems to me to be a good lesson in why turning the God-given into assets is such a very bad idea.
Monetising everything. Why on earth should there be a trade in water? āThe quality of mercyā¦.etcā
It is an old joke, but if they could do it to airā¦.they would.
It always seemed to me that masks were a first step in that direction.
Reply God kindly provides rain and rivers but not reservoirs, pipes and sewage works.
April 2, 2024
Reply to reply
TouchƩ!
But even so ā¦we didnāt have to sell over 70% of it to overseas banks, hedge funds etc.
Sucking out as much profit as poss. And reinvesting the absolute minimum?
The way I feel at the moment Iād happily settle for a village pond and pump.
And bucket obviously!
April 2, 2024
JR is correct, but his party and govt.ās allow the EU to dictate to us whether we can have reservoirs! His useless party and govt. no one else. They had an 85 seat majority and could have changed anything, they CHOSE not to preferring EU rule. JRs influence, nothing.
April 3, 2024
All part of selling and mortgaging the country’s assets to fund our Ā£3 trillion of government debt and our property bubble.
April 2, 2024
he makes lakes for us, so all we need to do is help him along a bit quicker!
April 2, 2024
The country didnāt steal assets, look at the performance of the hedge fund. Any private investor Roads, housing etc will want a government guarantee on pricing. EDF has it on a (high?) price for its electricity, wind generation has it. Completely different to water privatisation. What about the railways? You have nationalised track and taken some franchises back. Me thinks you are being selective in your views.
Let the lenders and investors take a haircut, write down and/or capitalise itās loans.
April 2, 2024
Agree – take a hair cut up to the level of dividends paid over the last six years
April 3, 2024
Which is apparently zero, but that is perhaps your point.
April 2, 2024
This does rather seem like privatise profits and nationalise losses – as we did with the banks.
Are other water monopolies acting in the same way – siphoning off vast amounts of money to their owners and failing to invest? In this comment I understand that the current owners have not taken dividends/ rewards, but the previous owners looted it. Are we going to allow the previous owners to repeat their behaviour with other utilities?
April 3, 2024
There has been lots of investment, but bills were definitely not raised enough to pay for it, so now there is a lot of catch-up needed.
April 2, 2024
All the water Companies are not investing enough and or pricing water supply to their customers properly. I suspect OFWAT has stopped them from raising prices.
April 2, 2024
eh? the price goes up every year – where do you live?
April 2, 2024
O/T, but does rapidly falling inflation – particularly that affecting energy – mean that the government should be axing the ‘more than forty’ cost-of-living support schemes, using the savings for tax-cuts? And does Hunt’s reluctance to do this at the last budget mean that he can’t now do this at the Autumn Statement?
April 2, 2024
Cost of living support schemes = income tax fiscal drag, all allowances on inheritance, dividends etc frozen or reduced. The squeezed 46% can’t afford the Tory’s.
April 2, 2024
Your preferred approach sounds right in the circumstances. But the difficulties faced by Thames Water are not unique. UK businesses face over regulation, too much taxation and an over reliance on foreign capital. It is the consequence of decades of poor economic management. No wonder UK investment companies look abroad to invest rather than to the UK, where profit is a dirty word and no tax on profit is judged too high but rather not high enough to fund the wasteful state.
April 2, 2024
If you didnāt compensate shareholders then the share price of utility companies would drop. If the utility company was close to bankruptcy it would drop to a penny stock and fall out the FTSE 100/250. The FTSE is already losing global market share so this might have the effect of pushing the FTSE and the equities market in London into a second tier along with Frankfurt and Sydney.
April 2, 2024
This would also have a knock on effect to investment banking, equity derivatives, private equity funds, stock brokers, legal services, accountancy, advertising, PH, HR, payroll, and various consultancies. Well over a hundred thousand high tax paying jobs in the City could be lost.
But Labour might just do it as part of their class war on rich bankers.
April 2, 2024
The Stock market has been under pressure for investors since Brownian times with taxes on pension dividends, stamp duty on sale and purchase of shares, capital gains taxes on out of ISA purchases, 100% for Corporate buyers/dealers. These charges don’t hamper our competitor’s the US or other capitalist markets. The Tory’s are busy encouraging Chinese/Indian students instead of English ones, to ensure we’re less competitive and more of our industry and capital flows will go elsewhere. Critical mass in our welfare state is fast approaching. You can’t have a welfare state and open borders as we have now as ………….everyone wants to come to claim their free health and welfare encouraged by the Tory’s, a FORMER conservative and capitalist party.
April 2, 2024
It did not seem to matter Sir John when you sold off the water company assets cheaply in the first place to privatise them. The lost to the taxpayer did not seem to matter then. Where has all the profits gone that would fund network expansion over the years to cope now ?
We now can see it was a very bad idea in the long term and we are now paying the price for political dogma yet again. When will free market advocates ever learn that the free market principles don’t work for every thing. Especially the strategic infrastructure of a country. Water, Gas, Electricity, Rail and Road networks. Telecommunications and Air travel are a bit more tolerant of political interference. Although the dependence on telecoms at the personal level is getting to be almost the same as the need for water, gas and electricity. The tax payer would be getting big profits from telecoms if state owned.
And we would not have the OFXXX’s to fund. But to be fair the overpopulation of the country does play a big part in the problem we now face and also a down turn in Engineering skill to cope with this expansion.
April 2, 2024
@John McDonald – Wrong of me to presume, but as a guess these outfits got the massive discount on the assets and infrastructure funded from the UK taxpayer knowing full-well when they did their ‘due-diligence’ that they would be required to pump a massive amount of cash into the operation to bring it up to date and viable.
Not my choice as a way of doing things, as the discipline of competition could not be attained we the ‘Taxpayer’ should have retained ownership of the infrastructure, then the day to day running, administration should have been placed by a limited time contract in private hands. We could have still had the consumer paying in their bills all upgrades needed. Never forget this Conservative Government is enforcing population increases on the Country therefore they are bring in more people to share the load, more Water users – if only they weren’t all on benefits
April 2, 2024
So what’s to stop them doing a repeat performance of borrowing against new assets generated by these price increases to pay future dividends? Then we go through the same thing again in 5-10 years time.
You’ve analysed this situation in the round, but under your proposed solution, there’s no moral hazard for shareholders in either borrowing to the hilt at low interest rates, or in buying assets already strapped up like that.
You can’t be held hostage as a regulator or government by shareholders who’ve perhaps realised that they’re in a privileged position as monopoly suppliers of a vital public service.
So there has to be some hit for shareholders perhaps along the lines of the Lloyds Bank mandate not to pay dividends to shareholders for some years when they were cajouled into buying HBOS. Along with them not being allowed to borrow to pay dividends.
April 2, 2024
So nothing to do with the Ā£5 billion that nationalisation would cost this government in an election year. The Regulator has, by refusing to sign offf their plans, effectively forced it.
And in other news this appalling government, beset by fraud, waste through inefficiency and paying illegal migrants to live in hotels etc is attacking pensioners who have been prudent for their retirement through the highest levels of tax.
April 2, 2024
Those pensioners weren’t very prudent when it came to voting for borrow and waste governments.
April 2, 2024
It strikes me as odd that the Left squawks hysterically about cleaning up rivers.
They arenāt worried about broken glass, old bicycles, prams etc ā¦only human waste. The plastic bag obsession having been long forgotten.
Yet for many years left-leaning govt.s have presided over the loss of hundreds of swimming pools, public baths, public loos and public laundries. ( Withdrawal of free water).
So we now have the weird situation where human waste is freely deposited in public places ( oh..and my garden ) but there is angst about a vast ungovernable river like the Thames which apparently should be made fit for swimming!
And the supply of water is regulated by cost and āplanet savingā measuresā¦whether you want them or no!
April 2, 2024
Neglected water stagnates.
April 2, 2024
If Thames Water is an independent private company, the government should keep well clear ā it is nothing to do with them. Get involved in one private company, then the government is obliged to get involved in all private companies to ābail outā the shareholders. As with the Company that bought the setup in the first place, the shareholders should have carried out due diligence before getting involved.
What happens once the go bust is another matter, I would argue that the purchaser never paid the seller (the taxpayer) the full price of the assets in the first place. Presumably the massive discount was as an inducement for the massive investment needed. Did that investment happen and match the discount?
April 2, 2024
People need to be reminded the BoE is an interpretation of what the government calls independent, and the Taxpayers is on the hook for all their incompetence and therefore losses. Then look at the MOD a government run administration that likes to lose money as it is not theirs. The government employs more people in the MOD than they can put on the front line ill-equipped to keep us secure. Like many things the front line gets punished due to government incompetence. The NHS another government run success; the government controls the purse strings yet no service is returned, here it is the customer/consumer and the front line the government punishes by it refusal to manage. The railways are they private? So why is government involved in the wage negotiations.
We have a half-hearted government that wants to be up front for the glory just in case things work out as expected, but are nowhere to be seen when an once of management is required.
April 2, 2024
Why not write off Bank loans/debentures up to the level of dividends paid over the last six years.
April 2, 2024
I thought one of the advantages of privatisation would be that the shareholders would hold the management to account rather than allow a company to run itself into the ground. Another advantage, I thought, was that Government (and by extension, the taxpayer) would be freed from risk.
Now it would seem that, one way or the other, taxpayers are going to have to cough up yet again to compensate for poor management and lack of responsible investment in order to demonstrate that the UK continues to be a good place to invest. My jaundiced view is that, of course the UK will be a good place to invest all the time that taxpayers get done over every time a company fails.
I share scepticism about too much nationalisation because, by the time national and local governments have funded their vanity projects and funded bloated bureaucracies , there is never enough money to go round for necessary investment.
This time, I suggest the shareholders must take full responsibility for the failings of the company. If they take the hit, it might encourage the others to be more diligent.
April 2, 2024
@David Paine +1 – politicians are happy to get a sound-bite headline a pat on the back when things go well, but go AWOL when their presumption of involvement come back to haunt them. Time for Government to own 100% the mistakes or step back and let real business run its course. We as Taxpayer should not see our money end up anywhere that we have no say in their activities – that includes the BoE
April 2, 2024
…….a pat on the back when things go well, but go AWOL when their presumption of involvement come back to haunt them. ……….SO where is Cleverly announcing his new turnaround policy, standing up to the French and the EU who refuse to keep THEIR illegal immigrants boat people within their borders??? It’s a hostile act of war and enforcement action is 3 years late because of the gutless Tory’s. Deport the same day, deport, deport. Then the message will quickly get through. Problem solved. Unless its deliberate policy or rank stupidity?? Like another Gove socialist policy on housing or landlords or doubling Council taxes for the thrifty and former conservative voters. Having the reverse effect! Just go and hand the keys to Reform who will look after that threatened population, the English!
April 2, 2024
The problem is with who the shareholders are. If the shareholders were the customers, they would be very keen on a well run operation, because their well-being depended on it. Rather than sell off the water companies, they should have been given to the customers seeing that it was theirs in the first place.
Questions about dividend payments would not arise, as all the customers cared about was low bills and maintenance not profit. They probably would need a quango regulator, but his remit would be much more limited, perhaps only ensuring the companies had fair rules for minority needs.
April 3, 2024
Worth looking at the current structure of Dwr Cymru, which is a not for profit (after it went bankrupt), allegedly with the strongest balance sheet in the UK water industry.
April 2, 2024
Well Sir John, this is another fine mess they have gotten into.
Thank goodness it is London based because as we are constantly told those in London are funding the whole country and clearly have sufficient resources to sort out their own water and mess.
With the ongoing increase in London population and the ongoing failure to make the new residents pay for the services they expect and consume maybe it is time to reflect on what is the prime driver of increasing sewage treatment London seems to be generating?
April 2, 2024
It is not a London problem, Thames Water covers out to Gloucestershire, Essex and Kent all of whom took a 10% hike to fund London’s sewers.
April 3, 2024
There is probably a good case for differential pricing which would have occurred naturally in the days when the water companies covered much more limited areas. Maybe even split Thames up into a London based entity and the rest to enable it. The rest would of course also benefit from selling supply to London.
April 2, 2024
“negotiated settlement between the company and the Regulator”
Agreed (Just adding my support)!
But, we will need a Strong Regulator (In a position to hold these company’s to account, over and above their ability to negotiate). It will need to be leverage, it’s the only real power it will have!
There seems to be? a conflict between the scope of an overall Competitions Regulator, and a more specific Water Company Regulator?
I would suggest a specific industry Regulator model, focused and less prone to bureaucracy, but would have less strategic focus! ? Comes down to Politicians, Parliamentary oversight!
RDM
April 2, 2024
How was it possible for Thames to accrue debts of Ā£14 bn?
Why was it allowed to just carry on if it’s debt crisis was simply getting worse?
This is not just a simple case of incompetence, it has all the marks of the way the Chancellor runs the economy. If we are going to have companies falling over then make sure the debt is huge and hard to explain.
When will the current owners/directors be investigated?
April 2, 2024
I don’t know why, but that made me smile – and think; ‘How is it possible for the government to accrue debts of Ā£2,600,000,000,000?
April 2, 2024
Bryan
Where was the Regulator when all this was going on ?
Who looked at the Audited accounts over the years ?
Who signed off on the borrowings/Debt ?
April 2, 2024
who in Government screamed at the Regulator each year ‘WTF is going on at Thames Water?
April 3, 2024
The original cost of the assets they manage is over Ā£26bn, now depreciated to about Ā£18bn. Some of the recent increase on debt is the result of using RPI indexed borrowing, with repayment indexed. It looked like a cheap way to borrow until inflation those.
April 2, 2024
Some people donāt like to hear this, but when companies go bust it is actually a good thing, it is part of the evolution cycle. Before Gordon Brown started messing with things, he knows nothing about how things worked, how things grew and how things advanced. At the time Brown in his wisdom was just as he was selling āourā selling gold at the bottom of the market, getting rid of our nuclear power industry as it was superfluous to requirements, causing the banking crises to bailout a buddy, he created what is called the āpre-packā for companies in difficulty. As well meaning on the face of it, it was, it was sold as saving jobs, in reality it was saving the necks of incompetent management allowing them to dump the ācostā of their mistakes on others. There is nothing wrong with a company going bust, it is part of the cycle of learning, getting better and improvement. What is wrong is shuffling the pack, getting others to pay for oneās own mistakes and still being left with the same mess. Like all politicians Brown as with Sunak/Hunt are incapable of thinking things through and assessing consequence ā all about the moment and the headline
In practice when a company goes under, it causes many more replacements created by the staff that are forced even reluctantly to move on. In practice they have more knowledge of the business than those at the top that failed. Out of the renewal you get some that become greater than the original, employ more than the original contribute more than the original.
With Thames Water things should be allowed to take their course, for many reasons the management is not up to the task so there has to be a clear out. Any renewal should be based on splitting the company. It is not for Government to interfere with a private entity ā unless someone is saying it is not private.
The Shareholders even the laudable pension funds knew at the outset they were placing a bet, gambling, with the future of their investors. The fund managers wonāt lose as much as those that placed their trust in them. I have sympathy with the investors, but they own the responsibility they placed in their investment team no one else, if gambling wasnāt their thing they would have put their money in a deposit account earning basic interest.
April 2, 2024
Nobody compensated Railtrack investors, governments are particularly untrustworthy in cases like this.
April 2, 2024
The previous management and ownership of Thames Water in the past allowed vast sums of money to be withdrawn at the expense of their users ; this being the case they must now put matters to right . Users were not considered in this process and regulators are required to protect and not harm .
April 2, 2024
Saying “No Dividends since 2017” is a tad smoke and mirrors.
In a little over three decades, Thames Water, the biggest water and sewerage company in England, serving 15 million people, has transformed from a debt-free public utility into what critics argue is a privately owned investment vehicle carrying the highest debt in the industry.
Over those years ā as admitted by Sarah Bentley, the firmās departing CEO ā its executives and the shareholders and private equity companies who own it have presided over decades of underinvestment, aggressive cost-cutting and huge dividend payments.
By the time Macquarie sold its stake in Thames Water in 2017, debts had more than tripled from Ā£3.2bn to Ā£10.5bn, unadjusted for inflation. Its pattern was to borrow against its assets to increase dividend payments to shareholders.
“No dividends since 2017” is meaningless!
April 2, 2024
If I had bought a share in Thames Water in 2017, how much would I have received in dividends since then?
Reply External shareholders received no dividends since 2017
April 3, 2024
Having looked at the accounts carefully I know that 4 months after the Macquarie organised takeover there was over Ā£3bn of bank borrowing on top of the Ā£3.5bn of bond finance, so in fact much of the early increase in bond finance was replacing short term bank loans, so it is not quite as bad as you paint. Moreover, there was reasonably substantial investment that had to be financed. With inadequate cashflow from retained earnings that had to come from borrowing and shareholders. Normally a company attempting such a major asset expansion would secure some of the funding from selling new shares and rights issues. That should have happened here too. That it didn’t left the balance sheet and financing costs very vulnerable to changed interest and inflation rates.
Of course more shares would result in more dividends too.
April 2, 2024
OT but of the general malaise. I now have no NHS dentist despite being registered with an NHS practice. Emergency services only by the private practitioner remaining. There is effectively no NHS service until further notice.
April 2, 2024
Thats the trend everywhere, sorry!
April 2, 2024
I will admit (on here) to being a climate change sceptic. But I read that a 1 degree centigrade rise in the air temperature means the air can hold 7% more water vapour. I would like to observe and ask: Is it ever going to stop bloody raining?
April 2, 2024
Thames Water has been sold and re-sold time and time again, primarily each time its purchase was funded by borrowing against the assets of the company. It has not been money from the shareholders to buy anything ā they have got to stay immune from any risk or downside, they keep their own money. It would appear money has been taken out far in excess of what has been invested. So that could be read as the owners were just taking money out, and any so-called investment was by way of loans against the assets. A lose-lose for the customer and OFWAT getting to kick the customer in the teeth as well, another meaningless Quango.
In a nutshell that has meant Thames Water had become a private monopoly and the shareholders have been covered in that although they get to take money out presumably because of the earning from customers, they have been able to suggest investment due to the loans taken out by hocking/mortgaging the assets. A no risk money go-round.
The other weird thing the empire that is Thames Water is massive, really massive yet not one single owner has ever had experience in running such a large single unit.
Reply Certainly not no risk for shareholders. Price controls and budget approvals from the Regulator prevented monopoly exploitation.
April 2, 2024
Off Topic.
I read Labour ‘is planning to abolish all hereditary peers (92) from the House of Lords if it wins the next general election. Although I wouldn’t have a major issue with that, the real problem they need to address is the other 800ish put there by previous PMs as thanks for donations and walking their dogs.
April 2, 2024
Why would shareholders need compensating if they are nationalised ? Surely you just allow them to go bankrupt (they practically are already), the shareholders and bond holders are wiped out, then the government buys them from the administrator for Ā£1. No problem.
Reply If you want to avoid the state having to find all the money for future investment and likely nationalised industry losses at current water prices you need to negotiate a solution. It is Kemble, not Thames Water, that has immediate financing problems.
April 2, 2024
If you canāt even honour & save the UK Union flag ā¦how can we expect you to honour & save our country
April 3, 2024
One regulatory mystery is why the government regulator has forced utilities to massively discount payments from those many many users who are already in receipt of large state benefits, the utility is allowed, indeed ordered, to charge the full extent of those discounts to those of us who actually pay our bills, so we pay not only for our own usage, but for that of everyone who claims the inability to pay. This is why a rise in billing payments is so toxic – the mass of discount holders (millions of them) will pay no more, but their large additional costs will be borne by workers already struggling to pay their own bills.
April 3, 2024
The same for council tax, social housing. A scam DWP should have sorted out by now. Welsh Govt. Announcing it will extend the govt. scheme for minimum payment of Ā£1600 per month to illegal boat people!