Feargal Sharkey has a simple message for the Environment Secretary. Stop waiting. Act.
“She must seize control of Thames Water,” the former Undertones frontman – who has spent years becoming one of the country’s most prominent voices on sewage, rivers and water privatisation – told the Mirror this week. “If the Secretary of State wanted to, she has the power to do so today with the stroke of a pen. It is time to act. Thames Water customers have been paying for their own exploitation.”
He is not speaking into a vacuum. The £10 billion creditor-led rescue deal designed to keep Thames Water out of special administration is in serious trouble after Emma Reynolds wrote to Ofwat raising “preliminary concerns” that the proposal does not sufficiently protect customers or the environment.
That sounds like cautious regulatory language. In practice, it means the government has looked at the plan and found it wanting.
The plan was straightforward in outline if not in detail. Lenders would take control of Thames Water, inject new money and write off part of the debt. The company would be recapitalised. Services would continue. Problem solved, in theory.
The problem is the terms. Reuters reported that Reynolds raised concerns the £10 billion plan did not adequately protect consumers or the environment. The Guardian’s reporting on the deal’s structure – £3.35 billion in new equity, £6.55 billion in new debt – also revealed that the plan would have allowed the company to avoid fines for pollution in exchange for the cash injection. That is the part that made it toxic. Customers are already facing higher bills. The company is still discharging sewage. And the proposed solution involved softening the penalties.
Reynolds has said she does not want Thames Water customers to “pick up the bill for the company’s failures.” That is the politics in a sentence. If ministers wave through a deal that looks like customers absorbing more risk while creditors take control and pollution penalties are loosened, Labour owns every sewage story that follows.
Thames Water could run out of funds as early as October, according to the Guardian. Special administration is now considered the most likely route if a credible rescue cannot be agreed.
Special administration is not nationalisation. This distinction matters because opponents of public ownership invariably present any form of intervention as a dramatic lurch into chaos. The actual process is considerably less dramatic. It is a legal mechanism that exists specifically because water is not an ordinary business – the objective is to ensure continued services while the company is stabilised and eventually transferred to whoever can run it properly. People’s taps do not stop working because the company behind them has collapsed. That is the whole point of having a special administration process in the first place.
Sharkey’s argument is not that special administration solves everything. It is that the current cycle has to break. Campaigners who have been pointing to the Thames Water situation for years are watching a company that serves 16 million people, carries roughly £20 billion of debt, has repeatedly failed on pollution and infrastructure, and is now coming back asking for a rescue package that weakens accountability.
Sophie Conquest, lead campaigner at We Own It, described privatisation as “an ideological experiment which has failed abysmally.” Ash Smith from Windrush Against Sewage Pollution accused the government of relying on arguments that “do not withstand even the most rudimentary fact checks” and suggested ministers were protecting “the position of water company owners and creditors” rather than the national interest.
As we reported in our Burnham Newsnight piece, Andy Burnham’s pitch for the Labour leadership includes public ownership of water, citing the Bee Network bus franchising model as proof that public control can work. His argument – “the shareholders never lose and the public never wins” – captures the same frustration Sharkey is expressing. The debate about water is no longer a niche environmental issue. It has become a cost-of-living issue, a public health issue and a fundamental question about what essential infrastructure is for.
Sharkey’s “stroke of a pen” line is deliberate. The powers exist. The case has been made. The company is failing. Customers are paying. And the latest rescue plan would have made them pay more while the people responsible for the failure got away with less.
The question is whether the government has the nerve to use what it already has.
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Jordon Scott is a digital media specialist and editor at The Daily Britain. He focuses on political coverage, platform strategy, and ensuring journalism remains accessible without compromising editorial standards.
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