England Should Renationalize Water Companies, Following Scotland's Public Ownership Model
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/devi-sridhar. "From Scotland, I look at England’s water privatisation disaster. I wish you had done what we did | Devi Sridhar | The Guardian." August 25, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The author, a public health expert living in Scotland, argues England should nationalize its water industry like Scotland did, because privatization has led to sky-high executive pay, sewage dumping, and profits flowing to foreign shareholders instead of infrastructure. She points to Scotland's publicly-owned water system as proof that public ownership works better—cheaper bills, more infrastructure investment, and no dividend payouts to shareholders.
Conclusion
England should bring its water companies back into public ownership, as Scotland did, rather than maintaining the current privatized system.
Premises
- Privatized English water companies have prioritized shareholder profits over customers, paying out £57bn in dividends between 1991-2019 while many parent companies are foreign-owned, sending profits out of Britain
- Lack of oversight in the privatized system creates perverse incentives, leading companies to raise prices and illegally dump untreated sewage into waterways
- Scotland's publicly-owned Scottish Water demonstrates a viable alternative: it invested 35% more per household in infrastructure than English companies (2002-2019), charges 14% less, and pays no dividends
- Scottish Water reinvests all profits into water and sanitation infrastructure rather than distributing them to shareholders
- Water is a life-essential resource without meaningful consumer choice (unlike cars or pharmaceuticals), making normal market competition logic inapplicable
- Poor water infrastructure and sewage contamination pose serious public health risks, as evidenced by historical cholera outbreaks and current warnings from England's Chief Medical Officer
Assumptions
- Public ownership inherently leads to better accountability and reinvestment than private ownership in essential utility sectors
- The Scottish model's outcomes are primarily attributable to ownership structure rather than other factors (geography, population density, regulatory environment, starting infrastructure conditions)
- The financial and operational challenges facing companies like Thames Water are primarily caused by the privatization model itself rather than mismanagement or other factors that could occur under any ownership structure
- What worked for Scotland's water system would translate similarly to England given different scale, population, and existing infrastructure
- Renationalization would not introduce new inefficiencies or costs (e.g., buyout costs, transition costs, potential government mismanagement)