Water firms robbed Universal Credit claimants of £22.4m in just one year

After sending a number of freedom of information (FOI) requests to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Canary has uncovered a shocking range of figures. Across the course of a year, privatised water suppliers across England and Wales robbed welfare claimants of £22.4m in Universal Credit (UC) payment deductions. This comes as the industry itself paid out more than £48.6m to its fat cat water bosses.

Specifically, the staggering sum suppliers deducted from vital social security payments would cover nearly half the executive and key management pay of the 13 largest companies for the 2024/25 financial year.

The damning figures come at a time when soaring water bills are forcing more than a third of households to ration water, and leaving two-fifths cutting back on other essentials.

DWP Universal Credit deductions: water companies raking it in

Analysis by the Canary of the chief executive pay of 13 major suppliers showed that for the 24/25 financial year, water bosses raked in more than £13m in salaries, pensions, bonuses, and other benefits. The data takes into account the bonus bans that industry regulator Ofwat announced in November 2025.

In total, including CEO pay, the 13 companies handed out over £48.6m to key management staff. This typically means a company’s directors (including non-executive) and other senior personnel operating at the top of its payscale.

It was during a similar 12 month period that water companies deducted tens of millions from Universal Credit claimants.

Through an FOI request to the DWP, the Canary was able to obtain data for the period spanning the bulk of the financial year from April 2024 to the end of March 2025. The data showed that during this timeframe, water and sewerage suppliers in England and Wales had taken £22.4m from claimants’ UC payments.

This was across the course of more than 1.1 million deductions.

In total, the Canary secured 18 months worth of water company deductions data from the DWP. This data spans two of the most up-to-date quarterly statistical releases for UC deductions. This showed that between March 2024 and August 2025, the UK’s water and sewerage industry siphoned £32.4m in customers’ Universal Credit.

Water companies robbing welfare from its poorest customers

Based on the data provided, we were unable to ascertain how many households water companies robbed of UC. However, the data does reveal what they deducted from claimants each month on average. Overall, water suppliers took around £20 a month from people’s Universal Credit payments.

For a single claimant over the age of 25, this was equivalent to approximately 5% of their standard allowance. The amount was below the average for third party deductions, and well below DWP advance payments and government deductions. Nevertheless, it would still be a major hit to claimants surviving on already inadequate payments.

Amid the soaring cost of living, as paltry as UC is, it’s still a lifeline for many of the poorest households. Yet water companies are depriving some of the most vulnerable claimants of the vital social security they’re entitled to.

Driving people into destitution: a feature, not a flaw

Naturally, it’s all completely on brand for the UK water racket. Regional water monopolies preside over the UK public’s access to one of the most basic essentials for life. And they are holding customers to ransom with ever-spiralling and unaffordable bills.

In 2024, private water companies pumped 4.7m hours of sewage into UK waterways. Across 2024 and 2025, they left more than a hundred thousand people without potable water due to infrastructure faults. In one instance, a water firm made residents sick from parasite-infested drinking water.

However, a handful of wealthy water company bosses still raked in millions in lavish payouts.

Now, we know that as they did all that, they were also levying punitive welfare deductions. In the process, they pocketed millions of pounds from some of the poorest, most vulnerable people.

Ultimately, big water companies driving people into destitution is a fundamental feature of their sweeping project of wealth extraction.

Galling double standards

And of course, there’s another galling irony to all this where Thames Water is concerned in particular. The company has nearly 1,000 times the debt that the industry leached from low income households through UC deductions.

When a water company is swimming in debt due to years of profit-driven mismanagement, the government does nothing. By contrast, when poor customers struggling with extortionate bills are in debt to their water firm, the state actively facilitates the private utility giants parasitising their welfare payments.

Nationalising water holds some of the solutions. It will obviously go some way to fixing this rotten-by-design capitalist apparatus and make water an accessible, affordable, guaranteed right for all. However, alongside it, we also need to do away with the DWP’s aggressive debt recovery programme. And more broadly, we need to dismantle the brutal DWP itself. Any welfare system that allows wealth-hoarding private companies to plunge struggling households into deeper poverty in order to line fat cat pockets, is one utterly broken beyond repair.

£22.4m in DWP welfare payments is a drop in the ocean for big water firms. But for the hundreds of thousands among the UK’s poorest losing out on it – it’ll be a very different story.

Featured image via the Canary