England and Wales' Water Leaking Companies

Climate change means we have to look after water better. England and Wales' long-privatised Water Companies are rubbish at this primary task. Regulator, Ofwat, estimates that, in 2021-2022, these Water Companies lost an average of almost 3000m litres of water from leaky pipes each day. This means that the English and Welsh water companies lost a total of more than a trillion litres of water that year (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/19/water-firms-england-wales-litres-leaky-pipes-ofwat). Since privatisation, the water companies have resolutely directed most of their monopolistic profits to shareholder dividends/mega rewards for their chief executives. Relatively little has been spent on improving infrastructure, new reservoirs etc. Ofwat has also proved relatively feeble in looking after the public's interests. That British public were 'conned' by Mrs Thatcher's sell-off of state-owned services. The privatised companies proved neither more efficient nor do they provide a cheaper service. Hardly remarkably, there have been calls for water provision to be renationalised. That renationalisation could result in a working system, capable of dealing with environmental challenges (such as not directing raw sewage into rivers and the seas). Currently, the privatised Water Companies are simply devoted to making fat cats fatter. Joe Public shouldn't have to pay for that!