Steve Coogan sums up the disaster of water privatisation – just as bills set to rise

With the corporate cronies in the Labour government about to oversee an “awful April” where numerous bills will go up, the BBC told the country about “three ways to cushion the blow of bill rises”. It missed a key step off the list, though. So actor Steve Coogan had to add it for them.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast about the coming increase in water bills in England and Wales, Coogan sat next to Lake Windermere – “the jewel in the crown of the Lake District National Park” which United Utilities has used “as an open sewer”. Windermere faces a toxic blue-green algae problem which is partially a result of this type of corporate pollution. And Coogan summed this up perfectly, insisting:

This is a direct result of a 35-year-old experiment in privatisation that has failed.

Steve Coogan later outlined the key way to improve the situation – that the BBC has failed to mention, arguing that water:

should be taken back into public ownership so any money generated is put into the system.

Steve Coogan: the problem is that “the system is broken”

Regarding pollution in Windermere, Coogan said:

United Utilities don’t have the network capacity to deal with it. And the reason they don’t have that is because of chronic underinvestment over the last 35 years, where all the profits have been paid out in dividends to shareholders and not invested in the infrastructure that’s required to keep the lake clean for ordinary people.

He added regarding water privatisation:

It’s a fundamentally broken system. 35 years. £80bn has been paid out in customer dividends from all the water utilities in this country. £80bn over 35 years. £80bn. And they’re talking about spending £75m here or there. It’s piffle. It’s nothing. The system is broken. Their priority will always be the shareholders.

Steve Coogan explains the reason we have sewage in our rivers & lakes is because of a 35yr failed experiment with water privatisation, its a broken system & the private companies have extracted over £80bn in that period.

"It should be taken back into public ownership"👏👏 pic.twitter.com/ROpSayXNhK

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) March 31, 2025

Demand public control

As campaign group We Own It has explained, “Margaret Thatcher privatised water in England and Wales in 1989”. Welsh Water is now a not-for-profit organisation, and Scottish Water and Northern Irish Water remain in public ownership, but England is one massive experimentation lab for the monsters of privatisation.

In Scotland, We Own It says “bills are lower and rivers and seas are cleaner”, and investment is higher (per household). But the private companies in charge of water in England have run up billions in debt and given even more billions to shareholders (almost entirely from abroad), all while increasing bills. And as the BBC reported, “sewage spills into England’s rivers and seas by water companies more than doubled in 2023” – particularly in poorer areas of the country. It added that “water quality is generally higher in other parts of the UK”.

Steve Coogan is right. Privatisation has created the problems. And bringing water (and other resources) back into public control is the first step necessary to make things better.

Featured image via the Canary