English water industry needs renationalising, says UNISON

UNISON has said that the Westminster government’s partial U-turn over allowing water companies to dump raw sewage in England shows that the industry should be renationalised in the fight to stop the pollution of waterways and seas. John Jones, the water, environment and transport service group member on the union’s national executive council, said: “Once again, this demonstrates that the water industry should be renationalised. “This government has – albeit temporarily – brought certain underperforming rail companies into the public sector. UNISON believes the same should be considered for those water companies in England who continually discharge raw sewage into watercourses, which is nothing short of a national disgrace.” According to the Environment Agency, last year there were 403,171 spills of sewage into England’s rivers and seas, totalling more than 3.1m hours of spillage. In July this year, Southern Water was fined a record £90m for 6,971 illegal spills at 17 treatment works in Hampshire, Kent and West Sussex, yet the company had expected to be fined and calculated that it would be cheaper than investing in infrastructure. When the industry was privatised in 1989, Margaret Thatcher’s government claimed that the sell-off would see the funds generated to tackle major infrastructure work. However, rather than invest in the works that would have greatly reduced the need to pollute, water companies have paid more than £2bn a year on average to shareh...
Source: UNISON Health care news - Category: UK Health Authors: Tags: Article News water environment and transport Source Type: news