Email via your email client, mobile email app or webmail:
Feel free to adapt the message and please add your name and address at the end of the message, so that your MP knows you are a constituent.
If the link doesn’t work for you you can cut and paste from here:
email address:
chris.ward.mp@parliament.uk
peter.kyle.mp@parliament.uk
sian.berry.mp@parliament.uk
message:
Water companies are monopolies – consumers have no choice but to use them, there is no ‘market’ in water. Water is a public good, and should be publicly owned, as it is in 90% of countries. Southern Water, is plagued by poor performance, excess debt, and mismanagement going on for many years. With 119 convictions, it has incurred a shocking £94 million in fines, the highest in the industry. Southern Water has amassed more than £6bn of debt – one of the UK’s most indebted water companies (BBC). In November Moody’s credit rating agency downgraded its rating of Southern Water to ‘junk’ Ba1 status, placing the scandal-hit utility company below investment grade.
Now Southern Water has raised prices by 47%, taking average bill rising to £703. This represents a huge jump from the 2024-25 average of £478. Many will struggle to pay this amount. Meanwhile consumers face sewage leaks in rivers and the sea, and a failure to invest over many decades since privatisation.
82% of voters across all parties want water in public ownership. This is the normal way to manage water across the world. Public ownership of Southern Water should include in its governance structure a role for households, workers and anti-sewage groups, alongside local councillors. In a cost of living crisis, with half the country struggling to pay bills each month, bringing water back into public ownership is the right thing to do to secure our water supply and end the mismanagement of the failed privatisation model.
We urge you to call on Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Steve Reid to use his powers to bring Southern Water into public ownership, and end the corporate rip off. To win my support and my vote, please call on your government to end monopoly capitalism and return water to public ownership.