Further evidence of the futility of putting public utilities with monopoly positions into private hands comes from good old Southern Waters latest fine for not only failing to properly control the risk of wastewater polluting the environment but for manipulating its wastewater sampling process, meaning it misreported information about the performance of some of its sewage treatment sites to avoid penalties. This is lying to you and me and potentially a criminal offence. Of course, this is not the first time that Southern Water has “misreported figures” for company gain, and they were fined £20.3M back in 2007 for manipulating its performance figures to enable it to increase prices to consumers.
Image: Tian Gan/Shutterstock
Given its nefarious track record as a private company the fine which is actually only £3m out of the headline figure of £126m seems rather generous and the remaining £123m will be returned to affected customers in the form of tiny rebates over the next five years ( £17 in 2021 and at least £11 per year for the following four years). No mention of penalties for the environmental damage that has inevitably been caused and no sanctions against those who presided over the companies fraudulent activities.
The fine relates to the time period from 2010 to 2016 – a time where the company was led by Chief Executive Matthew Wright, who collected some pretty impressive performance-related bonuses despite being bottom of the table for customer service. The Environment Agency has reportedly launched a criminal investigation into the case and it will be interesting to see if they decide to pursue charges against individuals or just the Company as a whole.
Southern Water has been privately owned (through a series of holding companies) since 2007 by the single-purpose company Greensands Holding Limited, who in turn is owned by various investment and infrastructure funds many of which are based overseas. including UBS Asset Management (UK), JP Morgan Asset Management (US), Whitehelm Capital (Australia) and Hermes Infrastructure Funds (UK), amongst others.
