Ministers and the water regulator, Ofwat, are scrambling to draw up contingency plans to rescue Thames Water amid fears that Britain’s biggest water company may collapse under a bulging debt pile.
Officials are considering how to take the company, which was privatised in 1989, into temporary public ownership if vital funds cannot be found. The news followed the surprise resignation on Tuesday of its chief executive, Sarah Bentley, and the industry as a whole is under fire over sewage dumping, water leaks, hosepipe bans and billions of pounds paid out to investors.
