[News] Well done southern water

[BN9 BHA]

The house I am working on in Lancing had a leak below the stopcock last week and ruining my lovely newly plastered walls.

How high up is this stopcock?

 

[Insel affe]

The house I am working on in Lancing had a leak below the stopcock last week and ruining my lovely newly plastered walls. The water meter isolator in the street wouldn't turn off the water to the house. Called Southern Water, they answered in 2-3 mins max. Then had a surveyor phone me an hour later for specifics. This was about lunchtime. By 4pm a couple of blokes had been, dug up the street, replaced the meter and isolator and a new access cover, retarmaced and were gone. I'd guess 5 hrs from call to the blokes leaving with the job done.

My one and only recent expereance with Southern Water. Brilliant service.

Thank you for your input Mr Keith Lough

 

[BNthree]

Water companies are the biggest racket going; water literally falls from the sky!

 

[KeegansHairPiece]

Disaster capitalism at it's finest.

Macquarie Group (nickname: Vampire Kangeroo) bought a controlling share in Southern Water as they did Thames Water. At Thames Water they saddled debt, paid little tax, sucked out the profits, before selling it on. Of course they already part own treatment facilities in China. So basically this stripping of our utilities through private ownership ends up leaving a precious resource in the hands of outside genius. 3 cheers for unregulated capitalism - yay...let's go for a swim....

Here's a map of the raw sewage Southern Water have released in the last 72 hours because they'd rather the fine than actually deal with it.

 

[Baldseagull]

You obviously don’t understand how water companies are funded and regulated, they are monopolies but OFWAT puts requirements on them on their 5 year AMP plans. Without privatisation all the inefficiency would still be there and the funding debt if all the schemes would be on he national debt not private debt.

Obviously as you have it in for shareholders you don’t have a pension because quests who some of the biggest pension funds like investing in - yes you guessed it utility companies as although not high level of profit it is steady and safe. If Southern Water was still a Quango) (nationalised utility) your bill would be much higher as it would be inefficient

Apologies for jumping in on you more than a week later, but I couldn't ignore this. Please look into this a little deeper, because I believe you will have a complete reversal of opinion if you examine things a little more closely. Some points you may wish to check up on.

Scottish Water, is publicly owned, and has invested nearly 35% more per household in infrastructure since 2002 than the privatised English water companies, according to analysis, and It charges users 14% less.

Water prices rose 50% within four years of privatisation, and prior to Thatcher intervening in the way the Water boards operated, they were run efficiently. She removed their ability to go to the market for borrowing for infrastructure works, and limited the increases they could make to bills, meaning they could not invest in infrastructure, and then pointed at them as ineffective authorities.
The newly created, privately owned, water and sewerage companies paid £7.6 billion for the regional water authorities. The government (us effectively) assumed responsibility for the sector's total debts amounting to £5 billion and granted the WSCs a further £1.5 billion of public funds.

The £60 Billion or so the Water companies have paid out in dividends since, is roughly equivalent to the amount that they have borrowed, and about half what they have spent on infrastructure. This means all infrastructure investment has been paid for by consumers bills, and the borrowing is only required to pay the large CEO salaries (above £2M a year in some cases) and dividends.

Clearly, things could be different if they were publicly owned, either they could be debt free and we could still be paying the same amount as we are, with the same level of infrastructure investment, or we could be paying a bit less and there would be a bit of debt, or we could be paying the same and have invested 50% more in infrastructure and have the same levels of debt. All of these, and other alternatives, would seem better to me than the status quo.

 

[Doonhamer7]

Apologies for jumping in on you more than a week later, but I couldn't ignore this. Please look into this a little deeper, because I believe you will have a complete reversal of opinion if you examine things a little more closely. Some points you may wish to check up on.

Scottish Water, is publicly owned, and has invested nearly 35% more per household in infrastructure since 2002 than the privatised English water companies, according to analysis, and It charges users 14% less.

Water prices rose 50% within four years of privatisation, and prior to Thatcher intervening in the way the Water boards operated, they were run efficiently. She removed their ability to go to the market for borrowing for infrastructure works, and limited the increases they could make to bills, meaning they could not invest in infrastructure, and then pointed at them as ineffective authorities.
The newly created, privately owned, water and sewerage companies paid £7.6 billion for the regional water authorities. The government (us effectively) assumed responsibility for the sector's total debts amounting to £5 billion and granted the WSCs a further £1.5 billion of public funds.

The £60 Billion or so the Water companies have paid out in dividends since, is roughly equivalent to the amount that they have borrowed, and about half what they have spent on infrastructure. This means all infrastructure investment has been paid for by consumers bills, and the borrowing is only required to pay the large CEO salaries (above £2M a year in some cases) and dividends.

Clearly, things could be different if they were publicly owned, either they could be debt free and we could still be paying the same amount as we are, with the same level of infrastructure investment, or we could be paying a bit less and there would be a bit of debt, or we could be paying the same and have invested 50% more in infrastructure and have the same levels of debt. All of these, and other alternatives, would seem better to me than the status quo.

Having worked at programme level in water industry you do need to see behind some of the data - Scottish Water has made more investment since 2002 because it was 12years behind the E&W water companies and had to do massive investment to catch up on to get water and sewerage levels to EU standards. Through Scottish Water Solutions Ltd an entity set up to bring E&W water industry best practise to Scotland which involved 2 English utilities (Thames and United Utilities), a programme manager and 4 delivery contractors to deliver their Q&S2 programme making significant savings that wouldn’t have been achieved as a state run company.

At Southern Water it was only when Scottish Power took over was significant fat removed - I think the workforce was halved in 2 years and performance wasn’t detrimentally affected. When I spoke to Ops Mgrs they admitted more than half there teams didn’t have enough work to do so needed to be reduced.

You stated how much dividends were paid out but what is that as a percentage of the overall revenue. I would be surprised if that is much over 5%. As for £2m Salaries - id be very surprised - salary will be a small percentage of their income - most will be bonus and share based. I know of project directors (admittedly not many) being on >£500k packages (mainly in oil and gas industry), so a £2m CEO package isn’t out of kilter with additional pressure and liability

Most if not all govt run projects are badly run having worked or had friends work on large infrastructure projects for the likes of LUL, Railtrack, MOD, Sellafield, Highways England. It’s only when working with private clients you really see proper commercial understanding coming into play

 

[Baldseagull]

Having worked at programme level in water industry you do need to see behind some of the data - Scottish Water has made more investment since 2002 because it was 12years behind the E&W water companies and had to do massive investment to catch up on to get water and sewerage levels to EU standards. Through Scottish Water Solutions Ltd an entity set up to bring E&W water industry best practise to Scotland which involved 2 English utilities (Thames and United Utilities), a programme manager and 4 delivery contractors to deliver their Q&S2 programme making significant savings that wouldn’t have been achieved as a state run company.

At Southern Water it was only when Scottish Power took over was significant fat removed - I think the workforce was halved in 2 years and performance wasn’t detrimentally affected. When I spoke to Ops Mgrs they admitted more than half there teams didn’t have enough work to do so needed to be reduced.

You stated how much dividends were paid out but what is that as a percentage of the overall revenue. I would be surprised if that is much over 5%. As for £2m Salaries - id be very surprised - salary will be a small percentage of their income - most will be bonus and share based. I know of project directors (admittedly not many) being on >£500k packages (mainly in oil and gas industry), so a £2m CEO package isn’t out of kilter with additional pressure and liability

Most if not all govt run projects are badly run having worked or had friends work on large infrastructure projects for the likes of LUL, Railtrack, MOD, Sellafield, Highways England. It’s only when working with private clients you really see proper commercial understanding coming into play

Personally, I think a £2M pay deal for running a monopoly sounds like easy money, they are not going to lose market share with a poor decision, which can happen to other utilities that you can shop around for. You are right though, it isn't all salary, but whatever you call it, it is money in the bank for the CEO.

 

[B-right-on]

How high up is this stopcock?

About 4" above the ground. Plaster sucks moisture up from the ground, the walls were damp about 18"-2' high off the ground. Rising /structural damp (not the TV sitcom either).

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Disaster capitalism at it's finest.

Macquarie Group (nickname: Vampire Kangeroo) bought a controlling share in Southern Water as they did Thames Water. At Thames Water they saddled debt, paid little tax, sucked out the profits, before selling it on. Of course they already part own treatment facilities in China. So basically this stripping of our utilities through private ownership ends up leaving a precious resource in the hands of outside genius. 3 cheers for unregulated capitalism - yay...let's go for a swim....

Here's a map of the raw sewage Southern Water have released in the last 72 hours because they'd rather the fine than actually deal with it.

That is tragic and criminal.

 

[Baldseagull]

Having worked at programme level in water industry you do need to see behind some of the data - Scottish Water has made more investment since 2002 because it was 12years behind the E&W water companies and had to do massive investment to catch up on to get water and sewerage levels to EU standards. Through Scottish Water Solutions Ltd an entity set up to bring E&W water industry best practise to Scotland which involved 2 English utilities (Thames and United Utilities), a programme manager and 4 delivery contractors to deliver their Q&S2 programme making significant savings that wouldn’t have been achieved as a state run company.

At Southern Water it was only when Scottish Power took over was significant fat removed - I think the workforce was halved in 2 years and performance wasn’t detrimentally affected. When I spoke to Ops Mgrs they admitted more than half there teams didn’t have enough work to do so needed to be reduced.

You stated how much dividends were paid out but what is that as a percentage of the overall revenue. I would be surprised if that is much over 5%. As for £2m Salaries - id be very surprised - salary will be a small percentage of their income - most will be bonus and share based. I know of project directors (admittedly not many) being on >£500k packages (mainly in oil and gas industry), so a £2m CEO package isn’t out of kilter with additional pressure and liability

Most if not all govt run projects are badly run having worked or had friends work on large infrastructure projects for the likes of LUL, Railtrack, MOD, Sellafield, Highways England. It’s only when working with private clients you really see proper commercial understanding coming into play

Railtrack was a private company for most of it's existence, and Rail Privatisation is another example of privatisation not working well. Southall rail crash, Ladbroke Grove rail crash (22 years ago tomorrow), Hatfield occurred during it's period of "proper commercial understanding".

 

[Stato]

Interesting piece by Zoe Williams in today's Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...wage-symbolise-broken-brexit-promises-for-one

Clicking on her link to the list of MPs who voted against a Lords amendment to stop water companies dumping raw sewage in the sea, and given the recent media attention, I was amazed to see the names of MPs in the Southern Water region, some with coastal constituencies . Have the likes of Maria Caulfield - Lewes, Mims Davies - Mid Sussex, Natalie Elphick - Dover, Nusrat Ghani - Wealden, Nick Gibb - Bognor, Andrew Griffith - Arundel, Sally Ann Hart - Hastings, Gillian Keegan - Chichester, Tom Tugendhat - Tonbridge not watched any local news in the past few months? They seem to have all taken a position against some very strong feeling from all across the political spectrum in their constituencies.

 

[Springal]

Interesting piece by Zoe Williams in today's Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...wage-symbolise-broken-brexit-promises-for-one

Clicking on her link to the list of MPs who voted against a Lords amendment to stop water companies dumping raw sewage in the sea, and given the recent media attention, I was amazed to see the names of MPs in the Southern Water region, some with coastal constituencies . Have the likes of Maria Caulfield - Lewes, Mims Davies - Mid Sussex, Natalie Elphick - Dover, Nusrat Ghani - Wealden, Nick Gibb - Bognor, Andrew Griffith - Arundel, Sally Ann Hart - Hastings, Gillian Keegan - Chichester, Tom Tugendhat - Tonbridge not watched any local news in the past few months? They seem to have all taken a position against some very strong feeling from all across the political spectrum in their constituencies.

Indeed. I notice this when it came out at the weekend. MPs literally voting to shit on their constituents door steps

 

[Gazwag]

Interesting piece by Zoe Williams in today's Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...wage-symbolise-broken-brexit-promises-for-one

Clicking on her link to the list of MPs who voted against a Lords amendment to stop water companies dumping raw sewage in the sea, and given the recent media attention, I was amazed to see the names of MPs in the Southern Water region, some with coastal constituencies . Have the likes of Maria Caulfield - Lewes, Mims Davies - Mid Sussex, Natalie Elphick - Dover, Nusrat Ghani - Wealden, Nick Gibb - Bognor, Andrew Griffith - Arundel, Sally Ann Hart - Hastings, Gillian Keegan - Chichester, Tom Tugendhat - Tonbridge not watched any local news in the past few months? They seem to have all taken a position against some very strong feeling from all across the political spectrum in their constituencies.

Maybe Sally Ann Hart thinks the shit in the sea will put off the immigrant's and sink their boats is better than putting off tourists

 

[beorhthelm]

Indeed. I notice this when it came out at the weekend. MPs literally voting to shit on their constituents door steps

its good ambush politics. make an amendment that asks for change that is difficult and costly, knowing government MPs will vote against. cue headlines which overlook nothing changed as a result.

 

[Stato]

its good ambush politics. make an amendment that asks for change that is difficult and costly, knowing government MPs will vote against. cue headlines which overlook nothing changed as a result.

Although their majority is large enough to allow for those representing areas where the issue is of particular political sensitivity to abstain or vote for the amendment without risking the government's position (i.e. that shareholders in private companies should be allowed to make a financial profit whilst dumping raw sewage in our seas). Peter Bottomley in Worthing and Greg Clark in T. Wells (not even coastal) both voted in favour and won't have to answer for their vote at their next election. Caulfield and Hart in Sussex both have large elements of coastal strip in their constituencies and will have to. Putting aside the actual issue, in Realpolitik terms its been handled very badly.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Although their majority is large enough to allow for those representing areas where the issue is of particular political sensitivity to abstain or vote for the amendment without risking the government's position (i.e. that shareholders in private companies should be allowed to make a financial profit whilst dumping raw sewage in our seas). Peter Bottomley in Worthing and Greg Clark in T. Wells (not even coastal) both voted in favour and won't have to answer for their vote at their next election. Caulfield and Hart in Sussex both have large elements of coastal strip in their constituencies and will have to. Putting aside the actual issue, in Realpolitik terms its been handled very badly.

Peter Bottomley, my MP, actually works very hard in his constituency, actually gives the impression he cares much of the time. He's in a shrinking minority in his party though, most of the 'one nation Tories' were purged prior to the last election.

 

[Jim in the West]

Interesting piece by Zoe Williams in today's Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...wage-symbolise-broken-brexit-promises-for-one

Clicking on her link to the list of MPs who voted against a Lords amendment to stop water companies dumping raw sewage in the sea, and given the recent media attention, I was amazed to see the names of MPs in the Southern Water region, some with coastal constituencies . Have the likes of Maria Caulfield - Lewes, Mims Davies - Mid Sussex, Natalie Elphick - Dover, Nusrat Ghani - Wealden, Nick Gibb - Bognor, Andrew Griffith - Arundel, Sally Ann Hart - Hastings, Gillian Keegan - Chichester, Tom Tugendhat - Tonbridge not watched any local news in the past few months? They seem to have all taken a position against some very strong feeling from all across the political spectrum in their constituencies.

It's not too late to put pressure on these MPs - the amendment will come back to the Commons (in the next few days, I think), having been "watered down" (but hopefully still reasonably robust). These MPs know that this is an issue that grabs public attention, and potentially WILL take notice of more concerted pressure from their constituents. If you live in one of those constituencies, please write URGENTLY, expressing your views

 

[beorhthelm]

It's not too late to put pressure on these MPs - the amendment will come back to the Commons (in the next few days, I think), having been "watered down" (but hopefully still reasonably robust). These MPs know that this is an issue that grabs public attention, and potentially WILL take notice of more concerted pressure from their constituents. If you live in one of those constituencies, please write URGENTLY, expressing your views

they did vote for the amendment, with many clauses about reducing storm overflow discharge, removing one clause. i think that was thrid reading so bill is passed.

 

[zefarelly]

Tim Loughton voted against it, I think that's the first time he's ever voted sensibly.

would have been a big nail in his coffin had he not.

 

[Boys 9d]

Not content with pumping sewage into the sea they are now using a residential street.
https://www.worthingherald.co.uk/ne...thern-water-apologises-for-disruption-3432812