Summary
- The Rivers Trust exists to fight for wild, healthy and natural rivers in the UK and Ireland. Water companies have a significant role to play to achieve this, but river health depends on action across whole catchments and on the combined pressures affecting water quality, quantity, and habitat condition and connectivity.
- Ownership matters, but it is not a silver bullet. There is no clear evidence that public, private or not-for-profit ownership consistently delivers better ecological outcomes. Governance, regulation, accountability, investment and environmental incentives are all critical.
- Every ownership model needs to deliver long-term investment. Rivers need sustained investment in infrastructure, maintenance and nature-based solutions, alongside effective management of water resources and climate resilience. Underinvestment ultimately harms rivers and communities.
- All significant pressures on rivers must be addressed. Sewage pollution is an important issue, but agriculture, abstraction, urban and road runoff, industry, development, habitat degradation and climate change also significantly affect river health. No single organisation can solve these problems alone.
- We will judge any reforms to water ownership by their outcomes for rivers. The urgent need to restore our rivers cannot wait any longer.
Our position on water ownership
Learn more about water ownership and our position in our full statement.
We do not have a position on any particular ownership model. We believe the most important question is whether the way water and wastewater services are owned, governed, regulated and financed delivers healthy rivers. There are legitimate arguments for different ownership models, and ownership can influence accountability, investment and financial incentives. However, the evidence does not show that changing ownership alone will guarantee better environmental outcomes.
We do not advocate for specific ownership models because our primary purpose is to restore healthy rivers, not to determine who owns and controls water companies. We will engage constructively in debates about ownership where they affect river health, but we do not want ownership debates to distract from action that is urgently needed now. Whatever happens to ownership of water utilities, rivers still need investment, pollution needs to be reduced, water resources need to be managed sustainably, and habitat need to be restored.
Privatisation is an important part of the history of the English water sector and there are legitimate concerns about how the model has operated, including financial extraction, investment and accountability. However, the condition of rivers cannot be attributed to ownership alone. Rivers face multiple pressures, including sewage, but also agricultural pollution, abstraction, urban and road runoff, physical modification, habitat loss and climate change. Water ownership models with different levels of public ownership and control elsewhere in the UK and Ireland also face significant environmental and investment challenges. The evidence therefore points to the importance of effective regulation, investment, governance and environmental incentives alongside ownership.
No. Sewage pollution is a serious and urgent problem. Water companies must be held accountable for reducing it. However, if our role is genuinely healthy rivers, we cannot stop there. A river can remain unhealthy even if sewage pollution is stopped because it may still suffer from agricultural pollution, over-abstraction, habitat degradation, physical modification, road runoff and other pressures. We need to tackle sewage pollution whilst also addressing other pressures that prevent rivers from recovering.
We will challenge water companies where their actions or failures harm rivers, whilst working with them where collaboration can deliver meaningful environmental improvements. Our approach is neither to endorse nor oppose water companies as a category, but to judge their actions by their impact on rivers.