One fifth of all water supplies are lost to leaks. On 800 sewage spills on average every day in 2022. More than £60bn ($76.4bn) of debt accumulated by water utilities. There is no shortage of numbers to help tell the story of the failure of Britain’s water industry. But there’s only one thing that really matters: how much it will cost to fix the system.
Even partial estimates suggest hundreds of billions of pounds will be needed. And the bill will almost certainly fall at the feet of households in the form of higher prices or additional taxes.