Will the high court allow Thames Water to load another £3bn of debt on to its already unsustainable pile of £19bn? Will the company appeal to the Competition and Markets Authority to try to bag bigger bill rises than the pre-inflation 35% permitted by the regulator? Does special administration, AKA temporary nationalisation, loom at the end of the end of next month?
Answers to the first two questions should emerge in the next week. In the meantime, here comes a subplot that in other circumstances would be the main event: Ofwat will investigate whether Thames has breached its obligations by failing to deliver environmental upgrades on time.
