For most people, water is something you rarely think about. It flows when you turn on the tap, it drains when you flush the toilet, and you trust the infrastructure around you to keep it that way. But when things go wrong, as I’ve discovered, the reality is very different — and the impact can be devastating.
My Experience
I’ve been living through an ordeal with United Utilities (UU) that has left me angry, exhausted, and, frankly, disillusioned with the way our water system is run. A prolonged leak and loss of service at my property caused damage, disrupted my home life, and undermined my ability to work from home — my home is not just my residence, but also my office. With no private outdoor space and constant service issues, my well-being has been deeply affected.
I documented my case in detail, calculating the cost of damage, loss of amenity, and the time wasted trying to get resolution. The total figure was over £61,000, a sum that reflects the very real disruption to my life and livelihood. Yet when I tried to get fair treatment, what I encountered instead was buck-passing, denial of responsibility, and endless delay.
What I Found Out Along the Way
In digging deeper, I began to understand that my case isn’t an isolated failure. It reflects systemic problems in how our privatised water industry operates:
- Cost Shifting: Water companies often push the burden of leaks and underground damage back onto customers and their insurers, leaving households and businesses to pick up the tab.
- Accountability Gaps: Because water is a regional monopoly, there’s no competition. You can’t switch providers if the service is poor.
- Opaque Ownership: Many UK water companies are owned by complex webs of investors — including overseas sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms. This means that while customers suffer, profits flow abroad.
- Dividends vs. Investment: Since privatisation in 1989, UK water companies have paid out over £57 billion in dividends to shareholders. In 2022 alone, around £1.8 billion left the sector as dividends — money that could have been reinvested in fixing leaks, upgrading infrastructure, or reducing bills.
Why This Matters
What shocked me most was how little choice or protection customers really have. If your broadband fails, you can switch provider. If your supermarket sells you bad goods, you shop elsewhere. But with water? You’re stuck. And while customers like me are left without basic amenities, overseas investors collect steady returns.
The industry’s slogans — like United Utilities’ “Save Water” — ring hollow when you see the sheer volume of water lost through leaks, or wasted while service problems drag on unresolved. It raises serious questions about truth in advertising, consumer protection, and regulatory oversight.
Where This Is Leading
My case is just one story, but it opens the door to much bigger issues:
- Are overseas sovereign wealth funds profiting unfairly from an essential UK utility?
- Should the Advertising Standards Authority and Trading Standards step in to hold companies accountable for misleading messages?
- With no competition and growing customer dissatisfaction, should the Competition & Markets Authority (formerly Monopoly Commission) investigate the structure of the industry?
- Could renationalisation — putting water back into public hands — redirect the £1.6–1.8 billion a year currently leaving the system into reinvestment and improvement?
This blog series will explore these questions. My next posts will dive deeper into the ownership structures of UK water companies, the scale of profits flowing overseas, and the risks customers and insurers face if things don’t change.
💧 Takeaway: My experience shows how fragile our water system really is — and how unfairly the burden falls on ordinary people. But the bigger picture is even more troubling: an industry structured to enrich distant investors while leaving UK households to deal with the leaks, the bills, and the mess.
Stay tuned for the next post: Who Really Owns Our Water?