Category Archives: Water industry

Southern Water considers shipping supplies from Norwegian fjords to UK

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Contingency plan using sea tankers to deal with future shortages would be paid for from customers’ bills

Southern Water, one of Britain’s biggest water companies, is drawing up contingency plans to tanker water from Norway to deal with future supply shortages and drought.

Southern, which has 2.7 million customers for drinking water supply in the south-east of England, could import water from Norwegian fjords to provide up to 45m litres a day, and would pay for it from customers’ bills.

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Thames Water credit ratings slashed to lower levels of junk as default fears grow

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S&P and Moody’s cut ratings by five notches on risk troubled company will run out of cash

Thames Water’s debt rating has been slashed to the lower levels of junk by two major credit rating agencies, piling further pressure on the UK’s biggest water company, which is rapidly running through cash and fighting to stave off renationalisation.

S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s said the utility was fast running out of money and on the brink of default. S&P cut its rating on Thames’s £15bn top-ranking debt pile by five notches to CCC+, taking it into the triple-C category that is considered very risky. Thames lost its investment-grade credit rating in July.

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Thames Water lobbied Whitehall to press Ofwat on allowing higher bills

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Exclusive: Debt-ridden company also warned officials of ‘chilling effect’ of any renationalisation

Thames Water has lobbied the government to intervene with the regulator to allow it to charge far higher bills, the Guardian can reveal.

Advisers and board members of the beleaguered water company are understood to have met Whitehall officials in recent weeks to say that allowing it to be temporarily renationalised would have a “chilling effect” on the entire UK’s appeal to international investors, sources familiar with the discussions told the Guardian.

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Thames Water says without steep bill increase it’s ‘neither financeable nor investible’

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Debt-laden company tells Ofwat if it cannot charge customers 59% more, it ‘would prevent company turnaround and recovery’

Thames Water has said it will be unable to recover from its funding crisis if it is blocked from charging customers significantly more, as it proposed to pile an extra £228 a year on to household bills.

The debt-laden company said the increase to bills that has been proposed by the industry regulator, Ofwat, leaves its activities “neither financeable nor investible”.

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Canadian export agency ‘hit by big losses after lending to Thames Water’

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State-backed body EDC has reportedly sold at deep discount two loans made to debt-ridden UK utility

Canada’s state-backed export credit agency is reportedly nursing steep losses after lending debt-ridden Thames Water hundreds of millions of pounds.

The British utility, which has said it could run out of cash by next June, received two loans from Export Development Canada (EDC) in 2018 and 2019 at the behest of the Canadian pension fund Omers.

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UK rivers and beaches have been heaped with pollution for years – when will we talk about restoration?

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The penalties reflect the failings of the Environment Agency and Ofwat as much as the water companies

Behind the record fines announced by Ofwat for the routine dumping of sewage into rivers and seas by three water companies, there is a voiceless victim, one that does not sit in boardrooms, or get a chance to count dividends. It is our rivers and coastal waters, subjected to years of continuous pollution under the noses of the regulators, which are suffering.

In all likelihood the £168m penalties for the already struggling Thames Water, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water will be followed by fines for the remaining eight water and sewerage companies, all of whom Ofwat is investigating over failure to treat sewage according to the law.

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Southern Water boss handed £183,000 bonus despite huge rise in bills

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Award for Lawrence Gosden comes despite criticism over business plan and attempts to increase bills by 73%

The chief executive of Southern Water has received a £183,000 bonus despite submitting a business plan that has been criticised by the industry regulator and attempting to raise bills more than any other English water company.

Lawrence Gosden received the bonus as part of a £764,000 pay package, up from £428,000 a year earlier, according to the company’s annual report.

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Thames Water owner to liquidate solar energy subsidiary amid debt crisis

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Exclusive: solar developer Trinzic to voluntarily shut down as holding company seeks to recoup more than £25m

A solar energy project developer linked to Thames Water is to be liquidated and its staff made redundant as the crisis engulfing the debt-laden water supplier puts strain on its complex corporate structure.

Trinzic Operations Ltd, which is ultimately owned by Thames’s parent company Kemble Water Holdings, is to be voluntarily shut down, the Guardian can reveal.

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Revealed: the ‘catastrophic scale’ of sewage spills in England and Wales

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Water companies have logged five sewage spills a day, every day, for a decade, analysis by the Observer shows

Water companies in England and Wales have averaged five serious sewage spills into rivers or seas every day over the past decade, the Observer can reveal.

Analysis of Environment Agency data has found that the 10 firms recorded 19,484 category 1-3 pollution incidents between 2013 and 2022, the most recent year recorded, an average of one every four and a half hours.

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UK’s Environment Agency chief admits regulator buries freedom of information requests

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Speaking at the UK River Summit, Philip Duffy said officials do not want to reveal the true ‘embarrassing’ environmental picture

The head of the Environment Agency has admitted that freedom of information requests have been buried by the regulator because the truth about the environment in England is “embarrassing”.

Philip Duffy, the body’s chief executive, told an audience at the UK River Summit in Morden, south London, this week that his officials were “worried about revealing the true state of what is going on” with regards to the state of the environment.

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Mains water begins returning to 32,500 East Sussex properties after pipe burst

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Southern Water says supplies coming back to St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings now that rupture in woodland area has been fixed

Water has started to return to more than 30,000 homes in East Sussex after a main burst three days ago.

Southern Water said in an update on Sunday afternoon that supplies were “gradually being restored” to about 32,5000 properties in St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings.

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Thames Water-linked firm paid £14m in dividends despite concerns over group

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Kennet Properties sells off Thames Water land, whose owner, Kemble Water, has warned it would not be able to pay a £190m loan

A development company that sells off land no longer needed by Thames Water has paid out a £14m dividend despite warnings that it could become engulfed by the embattled water group’s financial woes.

Accounts filed at Companies House show Kennet Properties paid out a £14.5m dividend during the year to 31 March 2023, despite the difficulties faced by the wider group, which is facing a potential administration.

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Australia’s Macquarie among lenders to Thames Water’s parent company

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Controversial investment bank could play important role in fate of Britain’s biggest water firm

The Australian investment bank Macquarie, which has been criticised for its role in the privatisation of England’s water industry, is understood be among lenders to Thames Water’s troubled parent company.

The former Thames Water shareholder could, along with other lenders, play an important role in determining the fate of Britain’s biggest water company, after its parent company Kemble Water Finance defaulted on its debt.

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Thames Water owner bond slumps to record lows amid uncertainty over firm

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Fall to 14.4p comes after shareholders said they were unwilling to inject further funds

A bond issued by Thames Water’s parent company has fallen to record lows as the embattled company scrambles to secure its future, and the government signalled it is “ready to step in if necessary”.

The £400m bond, issued by the water supplier’s parent company, Kemble, has slumped to only 14.4p after shareholders indicated that they were unwilling to inject further funds into the heavily indebted utility company.

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Thames Water hires restructuring advisers amid fears of collapse

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Crunch talks expected after investors refuse to secure short-term cashflow and parent company due to repay £190m loan

Thames Water has assembled a team of City experts to lead urgent restructuring talks this week amid fears that its parent company may collapse by the end of the month.

The crunch talks are expected to take place days after Thames Water’s investors signalled they would not put further funds into the company to secure its short-term cashflow, according to a source.

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Fresh crisis for Thames Water as investors pull plug on £500m of funding

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Decision raises concerns about financial future of UK’s biggest water firm and increases prospect of nationalisation

Investors at Thames Water have pulled the plug on £500m of emergency funding, raising concerns about the financial future of the country’s largest water company and increasing the prospect of nationalisation.

The beleaguered utilities company announced this morning that its shareholders had refused to provide the first tranche of £750m funding set to secure its short-term cashflow, after the company had failed to meet certain conditions.

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Labour has 99% chance of forming next government, says elections expert – UK politics live

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Prof Sir John Curtice, the psephologist and lead election analyst for the BBC, said the chances of a Tory revival were small

In the House of Lords peers have just started debating the second reading of the leasehold and freehold reform bill. The bill has already passed through the Commons.

Normally, at this stage of the process, the content of a government bill is all but finalised. But, as No 10 admitted on Monday, the government has still not decided how far it will go in terms of cutting ground rents for existing leaseholders.

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‘I’ve seen solid waste float by’: Surrey riverside residents try to Stop the Poo

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The sewage treatment works at Horley seem to be crumbling, much like owner Thames Water itself

The brochure boasts of a family-friendly community located in tranquil green space within easy reach of high-speed links to London.

However, the residents of a new development of 1,500 homes in Horley, Surrey, have recently set up a WhatsApp group, whose title illustrates a less attractive feature of the community: Stop the Poo.

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Come clean on secret taxpayer rescue plans for Thames Water, MP demands

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Exclusive: Sarah Olney to press in parliament for details of scheme being drawn up in event of supplier’s collapse

Ministers must come clean on the secret details of an emergency plan for a taxpayer bailout in the event of Thames Water collapsing, a Liberal Democrat MP has said.

Sarah Olney will press in parliament this week for details of a behind-the-scenes rescue operation being drawn up for the biggest privatised water company in England. Olney said keeping the details of the contingency plan secret amounted to a cover-up.

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Severn Trent fined more than £2m for ‘reckless’ pollution of River Trent

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Huge amounts of raw sewage were discharged into the river between November 2019 and February 2020

Severn Trent has been fined more than £2m for polluting the River Trent near Stoke, with the Environment Agency calling its storm contingency plans “woefully inadequate”.

Huge amounts of raw sewage were discharged into the river from Strongford wastewater treatment works near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, between November 2019 and February 2020.

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