Roz Savage, Liberal Democrat MP for South Cotswolds, has called for Thames Water to be placed into special administration and rebuilt as a customer-owned, public-benefit company. Speaking at the Sustain conference today (Friday 18 September), she said customers are being made to pay for decades of corporate failure. 

Roz used the speech to set out how money has flowed out of the water industry. Research from the University of Greenwich estimates that between 1991 and 2023, shareholders took around £85 billion more out of English water and sewerage companies than they put in as new equity. Ofwat has confirmed that the coming £104 billion investment programme will be paid for through a mix of customer bills, more borrowing and shareholder equity. 

“The promise of privatisation was that investors would bring money into our water system. Instead, over three decades, far more went out to shareholders than they ever put in. Money went out, infrastructure deteriorated and debt piled up – and now customers are being told to pay to put it right. 

“Thames Water customers can’t switch supplier the way they would a bank or a phone provider. They are captive customers of a monopoly, and they should not be asked to pay yet again to clean up a mess they did not create.” 

Fairford: the cost of deferred investment 

Roz highlighted the River Coln at Fairford, where she recently joined residents campaigning against sewage pollution. Fairford’s sewage treatment works was among around 120 Thames Water investment schemes that were deferred. The company’s former chair told the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that more than £1 billion was taken out of its capital programme to protect its finances. 

Analysis by Professor Peter Hammond records more than 8,100 hours of sewage spills at Fairford since the start of 2024. Under the Environment Agency’s heavy-rainfall methodology, only 347 of those hours – 4.3% – were assessed as compliant. 

“I stood beside the Coln with residents who are sick and tired of seeing their river used as a sewer. One of them, Debbie Campbell, became a campaigner after swallowing polluted water while swimming and ending up doubled over in pain. More than 95% of Fairford’s spill hours failed the Environment Agency’s own test. This is sustained pollution on an extraordinary scale, and it continued while the investment needed to stop it was put on hold.” 

A different ownership model 

Roz paid tribute to Ash Smith and Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, whose petition calling for a referendum on public ownership of water companies was signed by more than 208,000 people, including over 600 in South Cotswolds. She shares the petitioners’ view that the current model has failed, but argued that the country does not need to wait years for a referendum to act, and that taxpayers should not simply inherit the debts the model has built up. 

The Liberal Democrats want mutually owned, public-benefit water companies: professionally managed, accountable to customers, and reinvesting profits in the water system. Roz set out a series of further demands: 

• Thames Water placed into special administration now, with creditors taking the losses and the company brought out under a new ownership model 

• A new Clean Water Authority with the powers Ofwat lacked, including inspecting assets, publishing open data and requiring companies to measure the volume and toxicity of discharges, as well as their duration 

• Citizen scientists and environmental experts given a formal place in water company governance 

• A ban on bonuses until spills end and leaks are fixed 

• A three-year cooling-off period before the new regulator can hire from the industry it regulates 

• A single social tariff so nobody is priced out of water 

Roz added: 

“Rivers are living ecosystems, and nature has no seat in the boardroom and no voice at the regulator. I want somebody at the table whose job is to speak for the river. 

“The Coln flows into the Thames, and the Thames flows past Parliament. Our water system should serve customers, communities and the environment. For too long, customers have paid the bills, carried the risk and lived with the pollution while the money flowed elsewhere. They have had enough, and so have I.”