Eight ways to cut your water bill

Let's nationalise these water companies. We (the British people) need the profits more than the fat cats do! "Wouldn't that be expensive?" I hear you all cry... Not necessarily. The government could simply make a compulsory purchase order one afternoon, just after the markets close, of all the shares of all the water companies at the closing price that day. Instead of paying cash, issue exchange-tradable 'Water Bonds' paying about 5-6% to every shareholder. Investors can either keep them or sell them. Either way, they don't lose out. Continue to operate the companies as though they were private businesses - i.e. pay managers a sensible salary plus bonuses to run them efficiently. OFWAT would represent the government as owner of the companies - on our behalf - and could fix prices for each company to ensure that about a 10% profit each year is made, at the same time as ensuring the infrastructure is well maintained and gradually improved. Then, in future, instead of paying dividends to shareholders, the water companies pay interest on the bonds. Here comes the good bit... The leftover profits (4-5%) - currently overpaid to greedy directors and wasted on marketing(!) and God knows what else - get used to buy back the bonds on the market. About 15-20 years later, all the bonds will have been bought back, and we'll have a collection of water companies entirely owned by the British people, operated for the benefit of the British people. Then, consumers can enjoy reduced water bills and/or profits will be collected by the government, thus reducing the overall tax burden slightly. Meters would be mandantory for every customer. (Somehow FIND a way of fitting them to flats - even if it means putting them outside the building and running extra pipes to each unit) Profits would continue to be taxed, as they are now, so there'd be no change to revenues there. (They would continue to operate as indepenent companies, just like they are now, just with different shareholders...) This strategy (essentially re-nationalise using fixed-rate bonds) could of course be applied to the other utilities and national infrastructures. Everyone in the country would be a little better off, and the goverment would make a useful total income from the modest profits the companies would aim to make. All this would cost virtually nothing. No one would lose out (except the fat cats). We could do this now.

"This is because the SW residents have had to pay for the clean up of the water and coasts in this area and because we are a tourist zone, I don't think we get any help from the government" Then why not tax the tourists and those coming here to their second homes rather than those who actually live and work here!

At the end of the day water companies are in business primarily to make money. Providing us with water/sewerage is secondary to that. So what do you think would happen if we all had meters and all cut consumption "to save the planet"? Yes, you got it, unit prices would rise to make up their shortfall. What makes you think that they are not doing this already. O.K. they can make some savings by not having to increase supply or process so much sewage, but thats minimal. They'll get your money one way or the other.