Ban on Public Ownership of Water Companies to Be Lifted
The government will end the prohibition on taking water companies into public ownership, opening the way to nationalising firms that do not “serve the public interest”. Councils will separately be given power to take over poor-quality homes where landlords refuse to improve them. Both sit inside a wider argument about wresting control of the basics back from private hands.
This is the third housing power handed to councils in three days, after Sunday’s reform letting them seize homes left empty for six months, and the pattern is a government that would rather devolve enforcement than legislate nationally. On water the announcement is permissive rather than active: lifting a ban is not the same as buying anything, and no company has been named, no cost published and no timetable set. That distinction is exactly what the Liberal Democrat leader seized on, arguing that communities “blighted by sewage cannot wait yet another decade to finally stop profit trumping morals in our water industry”. The test will be whether any regulator or minister is willing to declare a specific firm as failing the public interest, because until one is, the power sits unused. Watch the first name mentioned.