Are All Water Companies Not Fit For Purpose?

[Bury the Trash]

Spot on!
The same argument could be applied to local authority highways inspectors as well.
In both cases these would traditionally be men who had served a number of years ‘on the tools’ and who the knew the job inside out.

wya back It wasnt 'highways ' it was County Council doing roadworks in hand, the Foreman where just wasters like all of the them driving around in there own van, i knew one or 2 wasnt any better at all.
same as the waterboard bloke in his van driving around idling the day out till he gets to pension off.
and they dump crp in the rivers and expect their customers to pay their fines via 'environmental. fee /percentage built into their customers bill

 

[Big Blue Yonder]

Scottish Water are £183 for a scheduled visit. But they’re not scheduling anything apart from their pensions.

Tried Billy Bowie as we often see their tankers passing the road end. - they’re asking £500 for a visit, and a hefty charge per cube. Politely declined. It can wait.

Try Richard Gray
He has a contract to empty septic tanks with tractors and tankers in our area

 

[puppet]

Scottish Water are refusing to empty septic tanks, as they are “short of drivers”, which is interesting as they’re a monopoly north of the border. It begs the question that if you’ve got a clogged septic tank in need of emptying, and the company that’s bound by charter to empty won’t, then what do you do…

Not a monopoly in SW Scotland.
WC in Fields do plenty tanks.

 

[Forkdriver]

I worked in the water industry before and after privatisation. Before it was overmanned and under resourced while being micro managed. Post, there were30% redundancies and a huge reduction in reporting to no effect. Then slowly the blob reasserted itself. Allowing venture capitalists to take the utilities outside the ownership of shareholders and outside the country was in my opinion one of the biggest robberies, even though personally I profited.
Poor management was and is the downfall, and the weakness of Offwat has allowed it to continue.
For all its faults l do like the not for profit ethos of Dwr Cymru.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

I worked in the water industry before and after privatisation. Before it was overmanned and under resourced while being micro managed. Post, there were30% redundancies and a huge reduction in reporting to no effect. Then slowly the blob reasserted itself. Allowing venture capitalists to take the utilities outside the ownership of shareholders and outside the country was in my opinion one of the biggest robberies, even though personally I profited.
Poor management was and is the downfall, and the weakness of Offwat has allowed it to continue.
For all its faults l do like the not for profit ethos of Dwr Cymru.

Public ownership is certainly not always the answer but the current system places control in the hands of an unaccountable profit driven monopoly, the worst of both worlds.

Competition in the water system is a myth unless we all have multiple supply lines and choose which one to use.

 

[teslacoils]

There's no reason public ownership should equal inefficient ......but it seems to be.

There's no reason private ownership should equal underinvestment and complex tac avoidance ....but it often seems to.

Privatised electric seems to have gone well. Water not so well. Moneys cheap. Buy them back.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

There's no reason public ownership should equal inefficient ......but it seems to be.

There's no reason private ownership should equal underinvestment and complex tac avoidance ....but it often seems to.

Privatised electric seems to have gone well. Water not so well. Moneys cheap. Buy them back.

Privatised electric is genuinely competetive (if you ignore the monopoly of the National Grid). You can swap power supplier easily.

Try doing that for water.....

Or sewage!

A genuinely competetive privatised marketplace is ideal so long as the market signal mechanism covers all the necessary factors. That is clearly not in place though or the water companies would not be washing raw sewage into rivers hundereds of times a day across the UK while paying massive shareholder and executive bonuses.

 

[Goweresque]

For all its faults l do like the not for profit ethos of Dwr Cymru.

Judging by the amount they charged my parents to move a water pipe a few meters they still manage to be robbing b&stards despite not having any 'profit ethos'.

 

[Frank-the-Wool]

Update on my water leak!!!

Well after being promised, no guaranteed by Southern Water Technical team, based in Sheffield that this leak had now been recorded as a "P2" which had to be fixed within 24 hours, well you can all guess that nothing has happened.
The water is still gushing out and flooding our fields and the traffic lights are still up.

John in Sheffield said he couldn't understand why it hadn't been fixed as it was a "P2"!! When I asked to speak to someone in charge who actually works in Southern Waters area, of course there wasn't anyone.
I asked for someone to call me back and guess what I have not heard a word.

This begins to look like a company that is in the throes of going bust as the fines for pollution have hit it hard and now having to pay compensation to people like me for inefficiency looks like the end of it and I guess the government (us) will bail it out.

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

Update on my water leak!!!

Well after being promised, no guaranteed by Southern Water Technical team, based in Sheffield that this leak had now been recorded as a "P2" which had to be fixed within 24 hours, well you can all guess that nothing has happened.
The water is still gushing out and flooding our fields and the traffic lights are still up.

John in Sheffield said he couldn't understand why it hadn't been fixed as it was a "P2"!! When I asked to speak to someone in charge who actually works in Southern Waters area, of course there wasn't anyone.
I asked for someone to call me back and guess what I have not heard a word.

This begins to look like a company that is in the throes of going bust as the fines for pollution have hit it hard and now having to pay compensation to people like me for inefficiency looks like the end of it and I guess the government (us) will bail it out.

Privatisation with inadequate regulation starting to look like a bad idea.

 

[fudge]

Privatisation with inadequate regulation starting to look like a bad idea.

Under the privatisation legislation water companies have a right to a return on “their” capital no matter how sh!t their performance. This anomaly has been in existence for over 30 years, it’s about time someone competent in parliament took a look at this. Oh wait a mo………

 

[yellow belly]

Of wat needs strengthening and with non ex water company people

private or public ownership make no difference if the regulator is weak and ineffective

 

[fudge]

The regulator isn’t accountable to the public. That’s in the legislation as well.

 

[Oliveau]

Update on my water leak!!!

Well after being promised, no guaranteed by Southern Water Technical team, based in Sheffield that this leak had now been recorded as a "P2" which had to be fixed within 24 hours, well you can all guess that nothing has happened.
The water is still gushing out and flooding our fields and the traffic lights are still up.

John in Sheffield said he couldn't understand why it hadn't been fixed as it was a "P2"!! When I asked to speak to someone in charge who actually works in Southern Waters area, of course there wasn't anyone.
I asked for someone to call me back and guess what I have not heard a word.

This begins to look like a company that is in the throes of going bust as the fines for pollution have hit it hard and now having to pay compensation to people like me for inefficiency looks like the end of it and I guess the government (us) will bail it out.

Time to start getting crafty. I’ve tried to find some contact details for you, but I‘m equally frustrated as you as SW only publish their helpline number.
Have a chat with your agent as there is a fair chance that he will have a contact at SW’s estates dept (Who ultimately will have to deal with your compensation claim.)
Your agent should rattle their cage as hard as he can with an initial phone call to the Estates dept. followed by correspondence. SW are going to have to pay his fees, so don’t hold back.

I suspect that SW have outsourced all their repair work to a ’contractor/partner’ and the 2 sides are not communicating.

 

[applejack]

Time to start getting crafty. I’ve tried to find some contact details for you, but I‘m equally frustrated as you as SW only publish their helpline number.
Have a chat with your agent as there is a fair chance that he will have a contact at SW’s estates dept (Who ultimately will have to deal with your compensation claim.)
Your agent should rattle their cage as hard as he can with an initial phone call to the Estates dept. followed by correspondence. SW are going to have to pay his fees, so don’t hold back.

I suspect that SW have outsourced all their repair work to a ’contractor/partner’ and the 2 sides are not communicating.

But then there's Castle Water!!
Covid 19, lockdown, TB, Red Tractor and most other things life can confront us with seem to be somewhat less of an issue than trying to deal with these clowns. They should be legally made to carry a Major Health Warning

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

But then there's Castle Water!!
Covid 19, lockdown, TB, Red Tractor and most other things life can confront us with seem to be somewhat less of an issue than trying to deal with these clowns. They should be legally made to carry a Major Health Warning

Chocolate teapot Co Ltd....

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Privatisation with inadequate regulation starting to look like a bad idea.

"Inadequate" is to put it industrially kindly....

To start with, the EA and OFWAT are pulling in toally different directions in law....

 

[nickf]

But then there's Castle Water!!
Covid 19, lockdown, TB, Red Tractor and most other things life can confront us with seem to be somewhat less of an issue than trying to deal with these clowns. They should be legally made to carry a Major Health Warning

Oh no...
I am about to sit down for tea and don’t need reminding about the shambles that is Castle Water. The owner of Castle Water actually wrote a textbook on business ethics once!

 

[bluebell]

we have had a long running dispute with, waterplus, waterplus is in my opinion the worst company ive ever had the misfortune to try to deal with?

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

we have had a long running dispute with, waterplus, waterplus is in my opinion the worst company ive ever had the misfortune to try to deal with?

It seems to me that the water companies and their sub contractors are exploiting their monopoly position by ignoring all quality of service criteria in favour of maximum return on investment.

Castle Water are acting as customer interface for increasing numbers of water providers yet their customer service is appalling.