Welcome, then, 34 years after privatisation, to a new era of get-tough regulation in the English water industry. The Environment Agency will have powers to levy unlimited financial penalties on companies for pollution offences. Over at Ofwat, the economic regulator is changing companies’ operating licences so that dividends cannot be paid to shareholders if balance sheets are too flimsy or if environmental performance is too poor. It’s all backed by the government’s new and wider-ranging “plan for water” that landed on Tuesday.
Convinced? Well, after three decades of demonstrably soft regulation, the only rational response is to believe in the new era when you see it. That is not only because the government’s headline-grabber about a ban on plastic in wet wipes has been round the policy U-bend twice already, as the campaigner Feargal Sharkey noted.
