'Only public ownership will fix Yorkshire Water' says Sheffield MP
Sheffield Central MP Abtisam Mohamed writes about her hopes to see Yorkshire Water brought under public control...
Four times in one year, the same street in Upperthorpe has had to watch water jet into the air from a burst main.
Addy Street has had to suffer from chronic neglect of a pipe that Yorkshire Water has not fixed properly on a network it has not maintained.
It is the same story across Sheffield.
Another burst in Walkley on June 1.
A main in the city centre that gave way and tore up the carriageway, leaving nearly half the city with low pressure or no water at all.
One of my constituents, a woman in her seventies, was housebound for eight days while repeated bursts flooded her property.
And all the while the company loses 21 per cent of its supply to leaks and tells the rest of us not to use a hosepipe.
This is the predictable outcome of a model built on extraction rather than service.
Yorkshire Water was privatised in 1989 debt-free.
Since then, they have paid £600,000 in dividends every single day to shareholders, while the company has driven itself into debt at around £500,000 a day.
Now they have offered an £8.3 billion investment programme as though it were a gift. It is not.
Yorkshire Water admits that 48 per cent comes straight from bills and the rest is borrowing that customers will repay later, with interest.
We are paying for all of it, through a 41 per cent rise by 2030, to repair a network their own dividends hollowed out.
Let me be clear. Regulation has been tried. Fines have been tried. A £40 million enforcement package has been tried.
The failure is structural. Only public ownership will fix it.
Hannah Cawley, candidate for the by-election in Walkley, is collecting signatures for water to be brought into public ownership.
I will present that petition in Parliament at the debate on the water sector on September 14.
Sheffield has paid enough. Add your name, lets take our water back.
Details of Hannah’s petition can be found here