United Utilities

United Utilities have recently announced that they are raising our bills by 6.4%. They are the only supplier of water to households in the North West of England so we have no choice but to use them. Business owners have a right to choose water suppliers but, like the rest of us, still have to go home and use water there, so this is affecting 100% of the population of the North West.

I was talking to Sally Ainsworth (the head of UU customer services) on Radio Merseyside recently and told her about the burst pipe in my area in 2022, which cut off most of the local supply. I’d rang up at the time about compensation as me and my neighbours were without water from roughly 10am to 9pm, so we got nothing. We had paid for water which we never received. The time we had no water was the time most people are active.

She told me about the “Guaranteed Standards” which require them to pay compensation to households that have been without water for 12 hours or more. I already knew this, but after asking for further explanation, she quoted the info off the UU website about “Priority List” customers ie the elderly, infirm or otherwise incapable of looking after themselves. They would have been sent bottled water (unheated).

Now I had the foresight to bottle tap water in case of emergencies, but that isn’t the point. Vulnerable people are still just being given bottled water and still having to pay for tap water, toilet water and boiler water that they did not get. The water I’d got had to be heated up with the kettle, so I could clean myself and wash the dishes. That was extra money for the electric company (which could have been UU, they are are a merger of NW Water plc and NORWEB electric company)

Before I could continue, I was cut off to allow her to continue her spiel and let another caller on.

So I couldn’t mention this:

The privatisation of water led to the Camelford disaster, the biggest mass poisoning of people in British history.

Nor could I mention that CEO Steve Mogford retired from the company after selling his £1.4m worth of shares.

Nor could I mention that they fail to maintain pipes across the Northwest, resulting in sewage spilled into the River Ellen, Cumbria for 7,000 hours (yes) in 2022 or that 10 of the 20 sewage leaking pipes in that year were owned by UU.

Nor that they paid £300m to shareholders last year or that they won’t be prosecuted by the Environment Agency for polluting the Mersey as it “won’t cause lasting damage” despite complaints from anglers.

Despite that money they made, they still wanted money from us, the people who can’t take their custom elsewhere, the people who did not have water for a day. 

The regulators Environmental Agency and OfWat were only set up to justify privatisation, they are not doing anything to stop the profiteering and damage done by UU to their paying customers or to the environment.

Clean water is not just a basic human right, it’s a literal necessity and it can not be sold for profit.