Water leakage equivalent to Loch Ness, claims Labour
Published 7 September 2018
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Labour has claimed that the water lost through leaks this decade would fill Loch Ness.
Ahead of a visit by party leader Jeremy Corbyn to Leicester’s historic Abbey Pumping Station, Labour said the leaks had resulted in the loss of more than 7.5 trillion litres of water between 2010 and 2017– the equivalent to the total volume of Loch Ness. This equated to the loss of 20 per cent of water before it reaches the home.
The party said an analysis of Ofwat figures shows that since privatisation of the industry, the value of water company shares across England has almost quadrupled.
However Labour said that investment in water supply infrastructure is lower than it was in 1990 while household bills are up 40 per cent.
Rebecca Long-Bailey MP, Labour’s shadow secretary of state for business and energy, said: “Labour will replace this dysfunctional system with a network of regional, publicly-owned water companies. Surplus profits will be reinvested in improving vital infrastructure and reducing customer bills.”
Responding to Labour’s figures, Michael Roberts, chief executive of Water UK, said: “As an industry we’ve invested £150 billion since privatisation, which has helped to cut leakage by a third and improve services.
“Water companies have just announced plans to invest an extra £10 billion a year to improve the water network, cut bills in real terms, and reduce leakage even further – all based on the views of over five million customers.
“In making the investment needed by the industry to tackle the big challenges posed by climate change and an increasing population, it’s not clear that government-owned water companies would win the fight for taxpayers’ money every year in competition with health and education.”
Water UK’s manifesto for the industry, published last week, revealed a major investment programme which aims to cut leaks by 16 per cent over the 2020-25 period.
A report on resilience published on 30 August by the Consumer Council for Water revealed overall leakage levels rose by 1.5 per cent in 2017/18 to 3,170 million litres per day.
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