At What Point – Water
At What Point?
By David Palethorpe
There comes a point in every national conversation when somebody has to ask the most inconvenient question of all:
At what point do we admit that we haven’t learned the lesson?
For those of us old enough to remember 1976, it is difficult to forget.
What a summer.
May, June, July, August and into September seemed to deliver endless sunshine.
Temperatures regularly climbed towards — and sometimes beyond — 30 degrees.
Britain discovered that it could, occasionally, behave like a Mediterranean country.
There was just one slight problem.
We ran short of water.
There were standpipes in streets.
People queued with containers.
Water bowsers appeared across the country.
It was quite an achievement: a nation enjoying a glorious summer while simultaneously discovering that turning on a tap was no longer something it could take entirely for granted.
And, importantly, 1976 taught us something.
Our water infrastructure needed resilience.
The drought exposed the vulnerability of the system, prompting major investment in reservoirs, interconnections and drought planning.
Then came the great privatisation argument.
In England and Wales, the water industry was privatised in 1989, with the argument that private capital could provide the investment required to modernise infrastructure and improve the system.
The old pipes were, we were told, old.
Some were Victorian.
They needed replacing.
The answer was investment.
So here we are.
50 years after 1976.
And after another period of prolonged hot, dry weather, we find ourselves having the same conversation.
Drought.
Water restrictions.
Warnings about supplies.
Concerns about resilience.
Concerns about leaks.
Concerns about infrastructure.
Now, to be fair, things have improved in some respects.
Ofwat says leakage has fallen by 43% since privatisation, and the sector has invested heavily in infrastructure.
But here’s the slightly awkward bit.
After half a century of private ownership, investment, regulation and promises of resilience, Ofwat still says around a fifth of the water entering the network is lost through leakage.
And the industry now has a record £104 billion investment programme for 2025–30.
Which rather brings us back to the question.
At what point does resilience become resilient?
Because apparently, we have been building it for about fifty years.
And yet every time nature turns the thermostat up and the rain decides to take a holiday, we are reminded that our water system remains under pressure.
Meanwhile, investors have quite reasonably expected a return on their capital.
Ofwat itself acknowledges that equity investors seek returns through dividends and/or growth in the value of their investments.
There is nothing inherently wrong with investment producing a return.
The question is whether an essential public resource should ever reach the point where the financial interests surrounding the system become more reliable than the system itself.
Because water isn’t a luxury product.
We can postpone buying a new television.
We can survive without a weekend away.
We can even, with sufficient courage, turn the heating down.
But water?
We need it.
So perhaps the question isn’t whether private companies can operate water infrastructure.
Clearly, they can.
The question is whether the model has delivered the level of resilience that was promised — and whether enough of the money flowing through the system is being directed towards the thing customers actually need.
More reservoirs.
Better pipes.
Less leakage.
Greater capacity.
Greater resilience.
And a system capable of dealing with the climate that is not only actually arriving, it is here, rather than the climate we remember.
Because climate change has rather inconveniently removed the luxury of waiting another fifty years.
Ofwat itself now says the conditions that made 1976 exceptional are becoming more frequent, and that the system needs to be designed for a warmer and drier future.
So perhaps, when the next drought arrives — and it will — we should resist the temptation to act surprised.
Instead, perhaps we should ask the question we should have been asking all along:
At what point do we stop describing resilience as something we’re building and start measuring whether we’ve actually built it?
Because after fifty years, the answer shouldn’t be:
“Give us another five.”
And it certainly shouldn’t be:
“Don’t worry. We’re investing.”
The British public has heard that one before.
In 1976, we were given the lesson.
Perhaps the real question now is whether we ever, or will ever learn it well enough.
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