Water companies should be taken into public ownership now | Letter

We have suffered a catalogue of mismanagement – £78bn has been paid in dividends and rivers and streams are full of sewage, writes Adrian Ramsay MP. Plus, a letter by Martin CooperI welcome the government’s decision to block Thames Water from borrowing money to pay bosses’ bonuses (Report, 15 May), but this is only a first step to tackling the crisis in our water industry – a crisis that will only intensify if excessively dry conditions persist.As if mismanaging our precious water wasn’t enough, many companies haven’t hesitated to take on unsustainable debt or pay billions to shareholders: £78bn has been paid out in dividends over the last three decades. For every pound of your water bill, an estimated 35 pence goes on debt or dividends. Continue reading...

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