10 articles
• via Sky News
Britain is facing a drinking water crisis that experts have warned about for nearly half a century. Despite repeated droughts and clear predictions, the government's response has been inadequate, with infrastructure leaking vast amounts of water daily. This crisis is not sudden but the result of decades of institutional failure across multiple governments.
• via BBC News
Five English water companies have successfully argued for higher bills to cover infrastructure failures they were supposed to maintain. The Competition and Markets Authority approved an additional £556 million in charges, on top of already planned 36% increases over five years. This comes as serious pollution incidents by water firms jumped 60% in a single year, highlighting a troubling pattern of privatized monopolies profiting from public goods while failing to deliver essential services.
• via The Guardian
Thames Water's £518 million desalination plant, built to secure London's water supply, has produced a mere seven days' worth of water over 15 years. This exposé reveals how the plant, plagued by operational failures and exorbitant costs, serves more as a financial asset for debt accumulation than a functional piece of infrastructure. As the company seeks another £535 million for a new project, the story highlights the systemic issues in Britain's privatised water industry, where public service is secondary to wealth extraction.
• via The Guardian
Since 1991, £193 billion has been extracted from British households and transferred to shareholders of privatised utilities, while promised competition and efficiency delivered polluted rivers, unreliable trains, and soaring bills. This isn't a policy debate anymore. It's a measurable wealth transfer operating at industrial scale.
• via The Independent
While the Environment Agency asks Britons to delete old emails to save water, the government plans a threefold increase in AI data center capacity, consuming billions of litres annually. This contradiction highlights the systemic failures of British governance, where performative individual actions replace real infrastructure solutions.
• via BBC News
Yorkshire Water manages 120 reservoirs, most built by Victorian city corporations or in the post-war reconstruction era. Thruscross was constructed in the 1960s. Grimwith was expanded in 1982. Then, shortly after water privatization in 1989, construction simply stopped.
• via The Guardian
English water companies dumped raw sewage into rivers and seas at record-breaking levels in 2024, with serious pollution incidents surging 60% in a single year. While politicians promised a crackdown on water pollution, the reality is stark: 75 serious incidents poisoned waterways last year, up from 47 in 2023.
• via The Guardian
While 16 million customers face hosepipe bans this summer, Thames Water's executives have successfully converted a £3bn emergency lifeline into personal windfalls totaling £15.7m. The company that can't maintain water supplies during a shortage somehow found £2.46m to pay 21 managers in April—from funds meant to prevent corporate collapse.
• via The Guardian
Steve Reed's appearance at Hertfordshire's Groundswell festival reveals the extraordinary disconnect between Labour's self-congratulation and Britain's accelerating institutional decay. While the Environment Secretary proclaimed "significant progress" from his hay bale podium, the nation's waterways continue to poison swimmers and Thames Water edges toward a collapse that will cost taxpayers billions.
• via The Independent
The Royal College of Physicians has delivered another damning assessment of British institutional failure, documenting how 99% of the UK population now breathes "toxic air" in what amounts to the largest preventable health crisis in modern Britain. Yet the response reveals everything about how this country's governing classes have learned to manage decline rather than prevent it.