The emergency water-rationing measures now affecting 13 million people across the south-east have rekindled memories of the last serious drought to afflict the country, in 1976. Britain in many ways is an unrecognisable country from the Britain of 30 years ago, when scraggy figures in flared trousers queued up at the standpipes. But one thing hasn’t changed. In spite of privatisation, the public water supply remains a creaking service using the same old Victorian mains pipes and the same system of demand management as it did 30 years ago: one where stuffy bureaucrats are dispatched to jolly us into public-spirited acts like bathing only every other day and leaving our geraniums unwatered.
A report by the House of Lords select committee on science and technology last week painted a dismal picture of the water industry. A quarter of supplies, it reports, are still leaking into the soil before they even reach the customer. Moreover, the committee reported an ‘astonishing’ level of non-payment among customers — who, because the Water Industry Act 1999 prohibits water companies from cutting off customers’ supplies, have started to treat their bills with contempt. Water companies simply pass the burden on to honest customers, whose bills have risen this year by an average of 5.5 per cent — 3 per cent above inflation.
The past two winters have been drier than usual, but that is far from the whole story behind the current water shortage. Equally responsible is the lack of a properly functioning market for water. Imagine if Sainsbury’s did away with its check-outs and barcodes and instead decided to charge its customers an annual flat-rate subscription based on their girth. It isn’t hard to see what would happen: the shelves would quickly empty.
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