Daily Archives: 19 Dec 2023

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19 Dec 2023

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Planning applications validated by EDDC for week beginning 4 December

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19 Dec 2023

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How much of your water bill is swallowed up by company debt?

Find out which English water companies have the most debt, who is proposing the biggest bill increases, and which ones have paid the most to shareholders

Anna Leach, Carmen Aguilar García, Rich Cousins, Ellen Wishart and Sandra Laville www.theguardian.com 

Water bills in England could be a quarter more expensive by 2030. But customers may not realise that almost 20p of every pound they pay goes to servicing company debts, rising to more than 25p for customers in some parts of the country.

England’s privatised water companies have a huge £60.3bn debt pile, which they say was taken on to fund essential infrastructure. The last 33 years of company accounts tell a different story about where the money from those loans has gone.

Between 1990 and 2023, English water companies have paid out a total of £53bn in dividends, meaning that they have given almost the same amount to shareholders as they currently have in debt.

Find out how much your bill could rise, how much your local water company spends servicing debt and which companies have been giving out the most money to their shareholders, by using our interactive tool. [Accessible through this link to original article] 

In contrast to the English system, at publicly owned Scottish Water, Guardian analysis found that 10% of revenue was spent paying costs associated with debt. As it is a public company with no shareholders, no dividends have been paid out, while its debts amounted to £4.1bn as of March 2023, equivalent to £1,493 per property provided with water.

Since Margaret Thatcher’s government privatised England’s water companies in 1989, debts have been piling up almost every year, going from no debt in 1989 to a combined £60.3bn between them in 2023.

While companies argue that debt has been used for investment, experts say that the debt has not been taken to finance investment but to pay “huge returns for shareholders”. Over the three decades, water companies have paid close to £53.1bn as shareholder dividends – more than £83.7bn in today’s prices.

The water companies’ five-year business plans with the proposed increase in bills will still need to be approved by the industry regulator, Ofwat, which will announce its decision in December.

Methodology

The Guardian analysed net debt and dividends from all England’s water companies using every year’s annual reports. Dividends include special and interim dividends and cover all payments out of the licensed utility under the category “dividends”. Definition of net debt and accounting periods might vary across companies.

Certain companies have changed name or merged with other companies over the 33-year period; we have analysed the documents submitted to Companies House for each of the current Ofwat water-supply licence holders.

Full explanation on how the cost of debt has been calculated can be found here, along with responses by companies to the figures uncovered by this Guardian analysis.

We collected data about the proposed increase in water bills from each of the companies’ business plans for 2025-2030.

The number of total connections per water company, provided by the Consumer Council for Water, includes household and not-household premises with a water and/or sewage connection. This has been used to normalise figures to be able to compare companies of different sizes.

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Honiton and Sidmouth: Richard Foord anticipates close battle

At the next election, local people face a clear choice – a strong Liberal Democrat champion fighting hard for our communities, or another silent Conservative who will always vote in his Party’s interest. It’s all to play for and every vote will matter. – Richard Foord

[Today Richard Foord moves the adjournment debate on Transport infrastructure in Cullompton] 

Will Goddard www.midweekherald.co.uk

It’s “all to play for” in the newly formed Honiton and Sidmouth seat at the next general election, according to Liberal Democrat candidate Richard Foord. 

The current MP for Tiverton and Honiton believes people are fed up with the current Conservative government and he has a real prospect of winning. 

A former British Army major, the 45-year-old was voted in during a by-election in 2022 following the resignation of former Tory MP Neil Parish after he watched pornography in the House of Commons. 

Mr Foord, who is married with three children and lives in Uffculme, will go head-to-head with East Devon Tory MP Simon Jupp in the contest for the new constituency. 

Large parts of the new seat are formed from the current East Devon and Tiverton and Honiton constituencies, which up until last year’s by-election win by Mr Foord for the Lib Dems, have always been Conservative. His majority is 6,144.

Mr Foord will go head-to-head with East Devon MP Simon Jupp for the seat. (Image: Gareth Williams)

Simon Jupp’s margin in the general election in 2019 was only marginally higher at 6,708.

The runner-up with over 40 per cent of the vote was independent Claire Wright, who is backing Mr Foord. 

Richard Foord MP said: “I think the fact that she came very close when the Conservatives nationally did so well in the 2019 general election… indicates that this part of the constituency (Sidmouth, Ottery and West Hill) should not be taken for granted by the Conservatives. 

“The feedback that I’ve been getting on the doorstep is very much that even long-term Conservative voters are at this time, in these circumstances, frustrated with this Conservative government and looking for an alternative.” 

Asked whether he thought he only won by a protest vote, as is often the case with by-elections, he said: “If we’re presenting it that by-elections are somehow different, I would say these are not usual times and the government’s polling has not improved since the by-election in June last year. 

“The popularity of Rishi Sunak as prime minister has hit lows that Boris Johnson didn’t quite reach. 

“I would definitely say it’s very much all to play for and it will come down to potentially every last vote. 

“I grew up here in the West Country. I came of political age at a time when the Liberal Democrats controlled most constituencies here.  

“When I was first able to vote in 1997, and at the subsequent election in 2001, you could walk from Truro to Bristol on Lib Dem-held territory.” 

Claire Wright, who stood as an independent candidate in 2019. (Image: Claire Wright)

If elected, Mr Foord says he will tackle healthcare problems, seek to boost the local economy, and put pressure on water companies to reduce sewage spills. 

He said: “I do feel that if we begin to lose community hospitals like the one in Seaton, it could be the thin end of the wedge for community hospitals more broadly.  

“Sidmouth has a community hospital, Ottery has a community hospital.

“I think we really need to protect these things because what I’m hearing on doorsteps is people want to be able to have access to healthcare close to home.  

“Linked to that, we have NHS dental services that are collapsing.

“NHS dentistry is something I care very deeply about. I also know that it’s something my constituents care very deeply about. 

“We need to have a local economy that enables businesses to thrive. This is where local politics meets national politics, because businesses cannot thrive if there isn’t a stable business environment for them to work in.  

“I’m hearing myself from businesses, large and small, that they want to get back to a time when politics was predictable. 

“They don’t like the uncertainty that our politics has brought us in recent years. And that… has had the effect of places closing up, shops shutting up, pubs shutting up. Hospitality is big business in this part of the world. 

“We know that sewage dumping is rife here on the Jurassic Coast and on the broader East Devon coast. 

“I think we need to take the responsibility for water quality monitoring away from the water companies, because it has been found that some of them have not been revealing all of the data that they should to the regulator, the Environment Agency.  

“The Liberal Democrats have been very strong in this area. We want to see water companies run as public benefit companies.  

“We want to see people with environmental concerns… community representatives with environmental concerns on the board of these companies, so that they’re not run purely to extract profit.” 

A general election is expected to be called next year, and must be held by the end of January 2025. 

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‘They all knew’: Michelle Mone hits out at Rishi Sunak over PPE deals

“I was honest with the Cabinet Office, the government and the NHS in my dealings with them. They all knew about my involvement from the very beginning.”

When it was put to her that she had admitted lying to the press, Mone replied: “That’s not a crime.”

But wasn’t she threatening legal action? – Owl

Peter Walker www.theguardian.com 

Michelle Mone has condemned Rishi Sunak after he expressed concern at her admission she lied about involvement in a company that won lucrative deals during Covid, saying the government “knew about my involvement from the very beginning”.

After the former Conservative peer admitted in a BBC interview on Sunday that she had been untruthful in denying a connection to PPE Medpro, which made millions of pounds in profits over a contract to provide personal protective equipment, Sunak said No 10 was taking the case “incredibly seriously”.

In a furious response to the prime minister’s comments, Mone tweeted: “What is Rishi Sunak talking about? I was honest with the Cabinet Office, the government and the NHS in my dealings with them. They all knew about my involvement from the very beginning.”

Her comments place even greater pressure on ministers to explain what they knew about the affair, particularly Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has already called for Gove to make a statement on Mone and PPE Medpro,

In the interview on Sunday, Mone said she had not told the truth about her involvement in the firm to protect her family from media attention. When it was put to her that she had admitted lying to the press, Mone replied: “That’s not a crime.”

Asked during a trip to Scotland about Mone’s admission, Sunak said: “The government takes these things incredibly seriously, which is why we’re pursuing legal action against the company concerned in these matters. That’s how seriously I take it and the government takes it.

“But it is also subject to an ongoing criminal investigation, and because of that, there’s not much further that I can add.”

Mone was made a Conservative peer by David Cameron in 2015, but has been on a leave of absence from the Lords since last year and is no longer in the party.

Speaking earlier on Monday, Lord Callanan, the energy efficiency minister, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he hoped Mone would not return to the upper house.

Asked whether as a self-confessed liar she should come back, Callanan said: “I would hope that she would see sense.” Pressed on what he meant, he added: “I would hope that she would not be coming back to the House of Lords.”

Guardian investigations found Mone and her husband, Doug Barrowman, were involved with PPE Medpro, which was awarded contracts worth £203m in May and June 2020 after she approached ministers, including Gove, with an offer to supply PPE equipment.

Asked about the case during a visit to Leeds, Starmer called it “a shocking disgrace from top to bottom”, adding: “There are now serious questions that I think Michael Gove, the government, needs to answer. Who made the original contact? What was the nature of that discussion that led to the situation that we now learn developed?

“I think they should make a statement in the House of Commons today about this so that the public can hear first-hand what actually happened here.”

The Labour leader added: “I don’t think she should be in the Lords. I think the government should be held to account for this.”

Speaking to BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Mone admitted that she and Barrowman, through their lawyers, repeatedly falsely denied they had any connection to PPE Medpro.

She said she regretted having done so: “We’ve done a lot of good but if we were to say anything that we have done that we are sorry for, and that’s … we should have told the press straight up, straight away, nothing to hide … I was just protecting my family. And again, I’m sorry for that, but I wasn’t trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. No one.”