Drought in Britain: the lessons we can learn from Europe
Q: Water companies in England and Wales are privatised. Is this common?
A: Not really – even Scotland has state-run water facilities. It is unusual for water provision to be run entirely privately. Many European countries, such as France, have their utilities run by private-public partnerships. In others, such as Spain, the issue is somewhat devolved, with some cities served by private companies and the rest of the country by a public water supply.
Proponents of public ownership say that water is such an important resource that there should be accountability. The government must be able to take control in a crisis. Some point to the rather strange situation we have in England, where the government is urging water companies to put in hosepipe bans, but is powerless to force them to do so – and they refuse.
Q: So the UK government can’t force water companies to do anything. What does this mean for supply?
A: The grand idea behind privatisation is that it makes a profit, which can be ploughed back into infrastructure, giving us shiny new pipes, loads of reservoirs and absolutely no leaks. Obviously, this hasn’t been the case – shareholders have become incredibly wealthy off the back of water companies in England and Wales because much of the profit is used to pay them, rather than to update our infrastructure.
The Angling Trust has been campaigning for new reservoirs so that we don’t have to keep sucking our precious chalk streams dry – but the last time a major reservoir was built was before privatisation.
Reservoirs are expensive to build, and it would cost billions to update our pipes so that they stop leaking. This has resulted in us having an infrastructure that was built to sustain the population of a few decades ago,
Read more on theguardian.com
