CAMPAIGNERS called for an end to water privatisation as Thames Water was today fined a record £122.7 million for breaking rules over sewage treatment and paying out dividends.
An investigation into Britain’s biggest water supplier revealed “a series of failures by the company to build, maintain and operate adequate infrastructure,” said water regulator Ofwat.
Nearly £170m of dividend payments by Thames in October 2023 and March 2024 were not justified in “a clear-cut case where Thames Water has let down its customers and failed to protect the environment,” said Ofwat chief executive David Black.
We Own It founder and director Cat Hobbs said: “None of this changes the underlying problem — as long as water is privatised, we will continue to be ripped off, and rivers will continue to be polluted for profit.”
River Action chief James Wallace added that “nothing will change unless the privatisation of Thames Water stops.” He urged Environment Secretary Steve Reed to “put this failing company into special administration and restructure its ownership and governance so it can be owned by and operated for public benefit.”
Thames Water has been fined £122.7m for breaching of rules relating to its sewage operations and shareholder payouts.
It is the biggest ever penalty issued by the water regulator Ofwat.
The regulator said the fines followed its “biggest and most complex investigation” and confirmed it would be paid by the company and its investors, not by customers.
A Thames Water spokesperson said: “We take our responsibility towards the environment very seriously.”
The fine issued by the water industry watchdog has ordered Thames Water to pay a £104.5m penalty for breaches of rules connected to its sewage operations.
That is on top of an additional penalty of £18.2m for breaches relating to shareholder payouts – known as dividends. It is the first time Ofwat has fined a water company over “undeserved dividends”.
Thames Water is currently in “cash lock up” and no further dividend payments can be paid without approval from Ofwat.
NHS trusts have been asked to make drastic cuts as the service faces a predicted shortfall of nearly £7 billion, health leaders warned today.
In a survey for NHS Providers, 47 per cent of trust leaders warned they are rolling back services to balance the books, while another 43 per cent are considering doing so.
Rehabilitation centres, talking therapies and diabetes services for young people are among services at risk.Eighty-six per cent of respondents said their organisation is having to cut jobs in non-clinical teams, while 37 per cent plan to cut clinical posts. A number of trusts are aiming to cut 500 jobs or more, with one planning as many as 1,000.NHS union Unison’s head of health Helga Pile said: “Ministers shouldn’t be insisting trusts balance their books while ignoring the damaging consequences for patient care and a demoralised workforce. “The NHS needs more staff — not fewer workers — if delays and waits for patients are to end.”It comes as NHS chief executive Sir Jim Mackey told a Medical Journalists Association event in London the service had “maxed out on what is affordable.” He said that the NHS was likely to have a £6.6bn deficit this year, despite a budget of around £200bn.
Though he has demanded unprecedented savings, he slammed the “normalisation” of poor care, saying that, 10 years ago, “we would have never accepted old ladies being on corridors next to an [A&E] department for hours on end.”We Own It founder and director Cat Hobbs said: “Back in 2012, the NHS was rated as the best healthcare service in the world. “That was before the legislation that deliberately opened up our whole NHS to profiteering. “Sir Jim Mackey is absolutely right to say that patients being treated in corridors and car parks is unacceptable. If he wants to stop this scandal while saving money, he must end privatisation as quickly as possible.
George Osborne and NHS nurses. This image is not one of mine, I need to search again for the source. later: I searched for the author and found it attributed to one person. Unless it’s done deliberately to look amateur (which it could be), I doubt that it’s him & not signed it anyway so probably doesn’t want attribution.
CHPI thinktank found five firms made an ‘eye-watering’ £169m in 2023-24, as calls for profit cap grow
Profits made from treating NHS eye patients by five private firms are so large they equal those made by the 100 with private finance initiative (PFI) hospital contracts, research shows.
The disclosure has led to calls for ministers to cap what can be “eye-watering” levels of profit made by private operators when they take over key public services.
Research by the Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI) thinktank found the five main companies providing cataract removals and other eye treatments to the NHS in England made an estimated £169m in profit collectively during 2023-24 – the same profit generated by the 100 PFI deals.
David Rowland of the CHPI, who carried out the research, said: “For years the biggest scandal of wasted money in the NHS has been PFI, with huge amounts of taxpayer money leaking out of the health system and into the profit accounts of private firms.
“But our research shows that the outsourcing of NHS eye care is an even bigger scandal. Just five eye care companies have generated the same profits in one year as the companies running all 100 NHS PFI schemes.”
A TransPennine Express train at Leeds train station, April, 2019
