Russell and Carol - hayle and hearty

...while the ills of our privatised water industry have many authors – from
Margaret Thatcher, who put it into private hands in 1989, to the
rapacious venture capitalists, who have stripped its assets and loaded
it with debt, to the company chiefs, who have been responsible for the despoilation of our rivers,
and to successive governments, who have been complicit in weakening
regulation – Sir James Bevan, one-time head of the Environment Agency,
is, in many eyes, seen as emblematic of the failures in oversight of
privatised water companies, the personification of a system that has
failed us all.

But it’s best to begin this shocking tale here.

There are 195 countries
in the world. Some are big, some small. Some are highly developed,
others not so much. Some are rich. Some poor.

Now for the extraordinary
fact.

Guess how many of those countries have put its water industry
fully into private hands.

That’s right. Just one. And, yes, that would
be England.

Simon Kelner

 

Alone among the nations of the world, we thought it was a good idea that
the industry providing our most basic and vital need, and to safeguard
some of the country’s precious natural assets, should be run with
private profit and not public good as its foremost objective.

... it affects us all. The lives of every one of us, in some way, is harmed
by the rampant discharging of raw sewage into our rivers and on to our
beaches. In 2024, untreated sewage was offloaded into England’s rivers and seas
for a record (and scarcely believable) 3.6 million hours. Once
crystal-clear rivers now run brown, devoid of fish and vegetation.
People have lost their lives as a result of coming into contact with the
toxic waste discharged by companies who have paid an estimated £85bn in
dividends, bonuses and incentives (while accumulating £60bn in debt).

...

In the meantime, a superbly executed, and harrowing, three-part Channel 4 docu-drama, Dirty Business, has brought this scandal into sharp focus. The failings of the water industry had been the lone crusade of former rock star Feargal Sharkey for almost a decade, but now he has legions of supporters. Dirty Business is essential viewing for anyone who cares about what sort of country we have become, that is, all of us.

Yet, while the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office,
resulted in a huge outcry, leading to a public inquiry, the overturning
of criminal convictions and the awarding of massive compensation
payouts, there hasn’t been the same visceral reaction to Dirty Business. The demand for the removal of Sir James Bevan’s appellation doesn’t really cut it.

...

As chief executive of the Environment Agency (EA) for eight years from
2015, Bevan occupied one of the most important watchdog roles in the
country. His responsibility was to hold water companies to account, and
to ensure that rivers and beaches were clean and that essential services
were maintained.

During his tenure, however, raw sewage spills became an everyday
occurrence, our rivers slid into ecological distress, and water
companies continued to reward investors handsomely while failing to
invest in basic infrastructure. The maintenance of sewage treatment
plants was a low priority for the nation’s water companies and sewage
plants were left in disrepair and unable to function, sometimes pumping
out untreated waste for months.

...

Sir James faced down critics of this system. In a speech in January
2022, he set out his strategy for soft-touch regulation, in which he
said his agency “would assume good intent on the part of operators until
and unless they showed us otherwise”. He added that “when the EA works
at its best, it is usually by working with rather than against those we
regulate”. This culture of “carrot rather than stick” was regarded as
naive at best, and complicit at worst, by campaign groups and those
working for the watchdog.

Sir James’s answer to cuts in government funding was to stop monitoring
so-called “low-impact” pollution events, which would result in thousands
of reported incidents not being investigated. These included a vast
number of sightings of raw sewage spills that were disregarded by the
agency

....

Who broke Britain? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series in which experts and writers debate the issues that concern them about modern Britain.

• The American woman who ripped the heart out of Cadbury
• You won’t know James Bevan, but you should know what he did to this country
• Boris Johnson wrecked Britain. But this man left even deeper scars
• The hardcore socialist whose ruinous idea is why Liz Truss became PM
• The ‘Red Tory’ behind one of the most anti-feminist ideas in British politics
• Martin Lewis: the money-saving expert… who accidentally cost Britons billions
• The cooking revolutionary who overthrew traditional British dishes
• Modern British dating is a car-crash – and Cilla Black is to blame