12-08-2013, 11:13 AM
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Thames Water Asks For Customer Price Increase
The UK's biggest water company, Thames Water, which is owned by a global consortium led by Australia's Macquarie Group, submitted the application to Ofwat to increase its charges by almost £30 for each household, for an interim adjustment to prices over the current five-year price period.They said it has spent £273m on acquiring land required for the construction of the Thames Tideway Tunnel. It also said bad debt as a result of the economic slowdown has prompted the application.
Thames Water said other factors were higher Environment Agency charges and the costs of operating and maintaining an additional 24,000 miles of sewers that were transferred to it by the Government in October 2011. The company said its average bill this year is £354 but added that including the hike it would still keep the cost to customers among the lowest in the country.
Ofwat resets price limits for each water company every five years, most recently in 2009, based on the best information available at the time.
"Then, during the five-year period, almost all changes to costs and revenues, whether upwards or downwards, are up to us to manage."
Shouldn't this responsibility fall to the shareholders? Isn't that the whole point of shares: sometimes you take out and sometimes you are asked to put back in?
I found this comment interesting:
It also said bad debt as a result of the economic slowdown has prompted the application.
How does a water company acquire bad debt ? this says to me that they or the consortium have lent money or goods which have not been repaid and just like banks, now believe that these losses can be passed on.
It is my belief that water companies have done very little to improve water supplies over the last 30 yrs. I have not heard of any more reservoirs being built, even though the population has grown dramatically in that time, water leaks account for about 25% of lost water with very few repairs being done about it and now it would seem, again just like banks, to make a fast buck they appear to have done some deals that have gone wrong and landed them with debt.
Now before the anti Thatcher brigade start, this all comes down to fly by night #$%$s who run these companies trying to get bigger bonuses by doing "clever" deals, again, just like banks.
Do you think there's any credence in that?
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/tha...083040704.html
12-08-2013, 12:28 PM
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Re: Thames Water Asks For Customer Price Increase
The bad debt according to other sources is customers failing to pay their bills which seems like they need to do more work to recover that money not make the rest of us pay for the bad debtors.The shareholders should indeed pay for a lot of this, investments can go up or down we were told when they didn't pay out enough on our endowment for our mortgage and we had to remortgage a couple of years ago.
12-08-2013, 03:22 PM
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Re: Thames Water Asks For Customer Price Increase
Originally Posted by Julie1962
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The bad debt according to other sources is customers failing to pay their bills which seems like they need to do more work to recover that money not make the rest of us pay for the bad debtors.
It will be interesting to see what Ofwat does - as if we need to wait
12-08-2013, 05:15 PM
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Re: Thames Water Asks For Customer Price Increase
Originally Posted by MickB
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Renationalise the lot without compensation!Nationalised industries may have been a little inefficient, but these privatised monstrosities are both incompetent and profiteering.
Victorian drains etc have never been maintained over all these years, neither has the pipe work, and now they are private the want us to pay, what a great business they can never fail.
12-08-2013, 07:24 PM
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Re: Thames Water Asks For Customer Price Increase
Think the water companyss can not cut off the water to none payers so.....http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/busine...cle3787850.ece
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