Water companies should be made to pay for infrastructure improvements - Yorkshire Post Letters

The sheer effrontery and brazen dishonesty of the water companies is breathtaking. First they apologise for the millions of hours of pumping raw sewage into rivers endangering lives from diseases like dysentery and e-coli and then announce a £10bn investment programme to deal with the problem.

Nothing wrong with that. But then comes the stinger - this will be paid for by increasing bills to the consumer.

How dare they. For a decade now they have syphoned off the massive profits of these companies to shareholders and executive management keeping very little back for investment.

Privatisation was undertaken in 1989 with the clear goal of funding investment in infrastructure. Such work was initially done but after the 1990s investment dropped and instead the cash was to all intents and purposes embezzled legally and used to create private fortunes while leaving the industry with crumbling infrastructure. Now they say we, the consumers, should pay again for what we have already paid for.The Environment Agency has called for water bosses to face prison sentences. Nick Ferrari echoed that call on LBC. The tide of anger countrywide towards them is surging. They are putting lives at risk deliberately.

The Conservative Government are also at fault for defunding the Environment Agency leading to a huge reduction in prosecutions - which fell from almost 800 in 2007-08 under the previous Labour government to just 16 prosecutions (out of 827 reported infringements) in 2021-22 under the Conservatives. They are complicit.

Yes this work should be done but not at consumers’ expense. All shareholder and management payments should be stopped until this problem is solved.

If companies cannot find a way to fund this vital work without raising bills they should be taken into public ownership. This blatant corruption cannot be allowed to go unpunished.