The head of Britain’s water regulator said water companies will have to deal with leaks and prices as the country faces a hosepipe ban.
“We have set ambitious and achievable goals for our water company, and leakage is one of them,” said David Black, CEO of The Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat). BBC Radio 4 on 16 August.
“We have asked the sector to reduce leakage by 16%. According to the latest information we have received, 13 of the 17 companies are on track to do so in the first two years.” he added.
Black said water companies in general do not offer good value for money.
“The sector as a whole has underperformed in price over the period to date (2022).
“We feel companies are inadequate and we hold them accountable,” Black said.
Britain is in drought.The source of the River Thames depletionand by the end of August, off wat Predict More than 20 million people in England and Wales will face a hose ban.
The UK water company is a private company with a local monopoly on important resources.
Scone’s Baroness Young is critical of regulators.
“Regulators must be absolutely ruthless in controlling the price increases and profits that companies can earn,” she told BBC Radio 4.
Punk rock singer Feargal Sharkey turned water campaigner. In the same show, Sharkey complained of “decades of underinvestment and unfair profits by the water company and its utter failure and mismanagement.”
“The truth is that regulatory failures have wreaked havoc on the environment and the shape of our rivers and lakes,” Sharkey said.
Kathryn Ross, Thames Water’s director of strategy and regulation and former CEO of Ofwatt, admitted to Radio 4 that her company’s water network is poor, but she said the company’s recent improvement efforts defended the record of
“Leaks are pervasive throughout the network,” says Ross.
“We have 20,000 miles of pipe, so we can’t completely eradicate leaks, but what we’ve done in the last three years has reduced leaks by 10 percent,” she said.
The Epoch Times did not receive a response to Ofwat’s request for comment by the time of publication.
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