This week Sheffield’s elected councillors got an invitation from Yorkshire Water’s public affairs team to attend the launch of a new education centre. It is revealing that we almost never hear from them, but this month I’ve received two emails from the company’s public affairs team.
Corporate whitewashing
If you’re wondering why, this follows weeks of headlines about Yorkshire Water boss Nicola Shaw taking a £1.3mn payment via an offshore parent company, and of the private water company imposing a hosepipe ban that is set “to last until winter”.
Let’s not forget their track record either. In 2024 alone, Yorkshire Water dumped raw sewage into our rivers more than 68,000 times, and lost 95 billion litres of water through leaks. We can only imagine what 2025 figures will reveal.
The reason I’m highlighting this invite is because I don’t think it should be happening. Corporations don’t invite to politicians to celebrations out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they want to influence us. In this case they want to limit our criticism and scrutiny.
This invitation feels less like outreach and more like corporate whitewashing – image-polishing to distract from their dire record. I won’t be attending, and would be surprised if any elected representative does.
Profiteering companies invest in PR for a reason: to protect their reputations, deflect justified criticism and keep the millions flowing to their shareholders. If this really was just about education, they would surely open the site without the fanfare, and not make the effort to invite elected politicians onto a guided tour with refreshments.
Water companies facing nationalisation
I’m not surprised that they are going to the effort. After years of mismanagement, Thames Water’s chickens are coming from to roost: it is looking increasingly likely that the government will temporarily nationalise the company.
The Common Wealth think tank have argued that public ownership is an inexpensive solution for the country, that the “true cost” of making water companies public is close to zero. Thames Water is £20bn in debt, so its value is next to nothing. The entire industry is bankrupt – financially as well as morally – with a total debt of £65bn, and what happens to Thames Water could well go for all water companies. They should all come back into public hands, with any debts recouped from the bonuses paid out to bosses over the years.
For full disclosure, I am an advocate for public ownership and have long made my views known. Removing the profit incentive from our drinking water is the only long-term solution to their corporate greed. But there is an urgency to taking water back from private hands sooner rather than later.
Undermining our water security
Clive Lewis MP has rightly highlighted that the behaviour of water companies, in “selling off reservoirs, failing to invest, polluting our water”, undermines our water security. He says it could be better understood as “sabotage”, and “in a time of national peril… treason”. He is proposing a water bill that would put workers and local communities in charge of public, democratic water companies, ending our broken privatised system.
And he’s right. It is outrageous that corporations are raking in profits while polluting our rivers. Since privatisation, not a single major reservoir has been built in England – and 25 have been sold off. That’s not simple neglect; it’s national sabotage.
We are in a drought. There are people to blame for the lack of planning, and they should answer for it. The next time you receive a letter telling you that your water bills are rising, remember who has been running the taps dry, and ask yourself why you are being made to pay for their failing.
We need to keep talking about Yorkshire Water’s failings, and not let them whitewash their record.
