Hosepipe ban is the latest drip of shame on water industry

The dusty brown countryside bears witness to what the statistics tell us: Yorkshire had its driest spring in 132 years and so a water shortage is inevitable.

Perhaps, in another era, there would have been some sympathy with those who are at the mercy of the great British weather when they are tasked with ensuring that we all have enough water.

But in this privatised era, the truth is that these monopoly operators make a handsome profit – £237m for Yorkshire Water last year – while paying their bosses vast sums – the chief executive at Yorkshire got a salary and pension package of £657,000 and a £371,000 bonus in 2023-24 – and yet they give their customers a poor service: Yorkshire loses 260m litres in leaks every day and has discharged sewage into rivers for 1.5m hours since 2020. Now comes the hosepipe ban.

Customers don’t have a choice to take their custom elsewhere. They have to pay their bills – which are to rise by 41 per cent over the next five years – to whichever company supplies their area. They cannot switch.

In Yorkshire, a third of the money raised by bill-payers goes on serving debts and paying dividends to the four ultimate shareholders who are based in Singapore, Hong Kong, the US and Australia.

This distance makes the situation even more frustrating: there is no one to be held to account for the failures, for the sewage, for the bans, for the leaks, for the lack of obvious strategy: Yorkshire’s population has risen by 500,000 since 2000 yet no new reservoir has been built for more than 40 years.

The hosepipe ban is the latest in the drip, drip, drip of shame of this privatised industry.