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Professor John Robertson OBA

Today, in the Guardian:

Thames Water has agreed a payment plan with the water regulator for fines it owes worth £123m, as it races to secure funding to avoid temporary nationalisation.

The water company, which serves 16 million customers across London and the south-east, is currently trying to pull together a deal to avoid collapse.

Earlier this month the government approved the appointment of insolvency advisers FTI Consulting to consult on plans for Thames Water to be placed into a special administration regime.

The debt-laden utility company was hit with a record £104m fine by Ofwat in May over environmental breaches involving sewage spills, after failing to operate and manage its treatment works and wastewater networks effectively.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/27/thames-water-agrees-payment-plan-for-sewage-and-dividend-fines

Thames Water serves 15.5 million people, approaching three times the 5.5 million served by Scottish Water.

Does Scottish Water owe a third of Thames Water’s £123 million, £40 million? Has it had a fine at one third of the Ofwat May 2025 fine of £104 million, £34 million?

Let’s see.

Sepa has an online file of all fines it has imposed, including any on Scottish Water, from 2019 to 2025.

Here are the Scottish Water fines imposed by Sepa:

• 2025 – 0
• 2024 – £6 000
• 2023 – 0
• 2022 – 0
• 2021 – 0
• 2020 – 0
• 2019 – £600

So, in 2025 so far, Thames Water has been fined for sewage spills, 15 757 times more (£104m divided by £6 600) than Scottish Water since 2019.

Oooh wait, divide that by three as they have three times the population, so it’s only 5 000 times more.

Source – https://beta.sepa.scot/regulation/enforcement/penalties-and-undertakings/#anchor-penaltiesimposedbyyear