New ‘Emergency Board’ Puts Pressure on Thames Water and Government Amid Court Chaos

Campaigners have launched an ‘Emergency Board’ to scrutinise Thames Water as the embattled water firm faces a crucial hearing over its survival at the Court of Appeal this week. 

Thames Water, the UK’s largest water firm, which serves London and much of the South East, is effectively insolvent and undergoing a £3 billion debt restructuring through the High Court. Opponents, led by Lib Dem MP Charlie Maynard, are opposing the move in the Court of Appeal, and want to see the company put into special measures.

Now campaign groups Compass and We Own It have added further pressure through their new scrutiny initiative. They want to address the “lack of democratic involvement in these huge decisions” over essential services. 

The Thames Water Emergency Board is made up of around around 100 bill-payers, workers, elected politicians, and environmental groups. 

It comes as a new report from Compass, backed by a leading backbench Labour MP, brands England’s water system “fundamentally broken” and urges the Government to take the sector on a “path back to public ownership”, after decades of asset-stripping by privately owned water companies.

Participants included Labour and Green councillors, the National Pension Convention, rent campaign ACORN, Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, the Sewage Campaign Network, and parliamentarians including Baroness Jenny Jones. 

The Board wants Thames Water’s insolvency and restructuring process to be “democratised” and for a new ownership and governance model to be adopted that puts customers first. 

In September, the board will report its findings on the state of the firm and alternative ownership models to replace Thames Water. The company is currently part of a group of companies called the Kemble Water Group, owned by a consortium of pension funds and overseas investors.

The intention of the campaign groups behind the Emergency Board is to launch similar ones across the country to scrutinise other water companies at risk. Thames Water is the “most crisis-ridden and urgent” case, a spokesperson for Compass told Byline Times.

Thames Water’s financial crisis follows decades of pay-outs to shareholders, and after creditors imposed a 10% interest rate on £3 billion in debts, a debt deal that proponents of nationalisation say is many times more expensive than the alternatives, such as being taken into Special Administration.

Under Special Administration, the courts would appoint insolvency experts to manage the affairs of the company while it gets back on track and fixes the debt crisis. 

The vast majority of the public (82%) want water returned to public ownership, according to recent polling for We Own It. The latest initiative is part of the “Our Water Our Way” campaign. 

Participants are throwing their weight behind Labour left-winger Clive Lewis MP’s Water Bill, which is being heard in the Commons on March 28th. Lewis’ bill would establish a Citizens’ Assembly on the future of water ownership, and he is lobbying MPs and the Government to get behind it. 

Compass’ new report, shared exclusively with Byline Times, points out that every single water company operating in England is under criminal investigation for illegal pollution by one of the regulators, Ofwat over sewage spills and overflows. 

Many are also under investigation by the Environment Agency for breaching pollution permits. 

The regulators themselves have been heavily criticised for failing over decades to stem the flow of equity out of companies into the hands of private shareholders. The Government recently passed its own water legislation to toughen up regulation, but the campaign groups say it does not tackle the fundamental problems of ownership, including asset-stripping and high bills in what are effectively regional monopolies. 

The report’s recommendations to the Government include laying out a clear plan and timeline to “reform our failing regulators” Ofwat and the Environment Agency. And they want ministers to commit to exploring the different models of ownership and governance outside of privatisation. The Government has ruled out nationalising the sector as too costly. 

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Clive Lewis MP wrote the foreword for the report. He said: “There’s rightful public outrage about how our water is being mismanaged. What’s more, regulators and water companies have concocted a bureaucratic maze of vast complexity to try to shut out any proper scrutiny of our failing water system.

“A conversation involving the public on how we fix the water crisis must take place in broad daylight, not behind the closed doors of boardrooms of private companies. This campaign will be the start of the effort to put future management of water where it should be: in the hands of parliament and the public.”

Lena Swedlow, Campaign Manager at Compass and author of the report, added: “Unless we stop them, water companies and regulators are about to land all of us with massive bill increases whilst shareholders milk out yet more profits. 

“We can’t rely on more failed regulators and compromised companies to fix this for us. This report begins to chart a course out of the sewage stained swamp that is the UK water system.” 

Compass’ report is available to read here.

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Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.

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