In the second part of our focus on the water industry, we chart the decline of one of the UK’s major utility companies, now on the brink of emergency renationalisation
Part 1: How privatisation changed the water industry
Government officials who tour Coppermills, a vast Thames Water treatment works in north-east London, are left under no illusions about the dire condition of Britain’s infrastructure.
“It’s in a shocking state,” said one official who has visited the 1960s site, which supplies approximately a third of the capital’s population with drinking water and sewage services. “It’s a slow-motion management disaster.”
