33 Facts About Thames Water

Thames Water Utilities Ltd, known as Thames Water, is a large private utility company responsible for the public water supply and waste water treatment in most of Greater London, Luton, the Thames Valley, Surrey, Gloucestershire, north Wiltshire, far west Kent, and some other parts of England; it has a considerable local monopoly.

Thames Water is the UK's largest water and wastewater services company, and supplies 2.

Thames Water is responsible for a range of water management infrastructure projects including the Thames Water Ring Main around London; the Lee Tunnel; Europe's largest wastewater treatment works and the UK's first large-scale desalination plant, both at Beckton.

Thames Water awarded Bazalgette Tunnel Ltd the contract to build the £4.

Thames Water is regulated under the Water Industry Act 1991 and is owned by Kemble Water Holdings Ltd, a consortium formed in late 2006 and formerly owned by Australian-based Macquarie Group's European Infrastructure Funds specifically for the purpose of purchasing Thames Water.

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The Thames Conservancy was established in 1857 with unified control over water supply, drainage and navigation.

In 1989, the responsibility for navigation, regulatory, river and channels management inherited from the Thames Water Conservancy, was transferred to the National Rivers Authority which later became part of the Environment Agency.

Thames Water became listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

Thames Water plc was acquired by the German utility company RWE in 2001.

Thames Water was a Tier Three sponsor of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

In 2017, under the government's Open Water programme, and in common with all water and sewerage companies, Thames Water must provide entirely separate retail and wholesale operations for its commercial customers, working through a central market operator.

On 14 March 2017, Macquarie Group sold its remaining stake in Thames Water's holding company to OMERS and the Kuwait Investment Authority.

In 2021, the financial position of Thames Water can be characterised as follows: Thames Water generates annual revenues of around £2bn.

Thames Water has annual capital requirements for investments into its infrastructure of around £800m – £1bn.

When Thames Water therefore refers to an investment program of this magnitude, this really only means that they maintain the units in the state to be able to run their business.

Since years therefore, Thames Water has continuously issued more bonds in order to be able to service its debt.

Thames Water produces biosolid fertiliser as a by-product from the waste treatment, and supplies this to local farms.

In December 2014 Thames Water pleaded guilty to a charge under the Health and Safety at Work etc.

Thames Water was repeatedly criticised for the amount of water that leaked from its pipes by the industry regulator Ofwat and was fined for this.

The Consumer Council for Water, a customers' group, accused Thames Water of continuing to miss its targets for the preceding five years.

Thames Water has hit its Ofwat-agreed annual leakage-reduction target for each of the ten years running from 2006 to 2016.

In June 2018 regulators made Thames Water pay £65 million to customers among other problems because they failed to fix leaks.

Thames Water admitted other water pollution and offences in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

Conversely, in 2014, Thames Water admitted that it had accidentally over-reported the number of properties at high risk of sewage flooding between 2005 and 2010.

On 29 October 2011, Thames Water released thousands of tonnes of raw sewage into the River Crane in Greater London, killing thousands of fish, when a six-tonne valve jammed during routine maintenance.

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In January 2016, Thames Water was fined a record £1m for polluting the Grand Union Canal in Hertfordshire between July 2012 and April 2013.

In December 2018, Thames Water was fined £2m for polluting two brooks near Milton-under-Wychwood in Oxfordshire.

Thames Water has a licence to discharge sewage into the watercourse in storm conditions.

Thames Water did not meet the conditions which would allow it to discharge treated sewage.

In May 2021, Thames Water was fined £4m for a number of pollution incidents which took place between 2016 and 2019 in the Kingston Area.

Thames Water considered it had been following an existing protocol agreed with Surrey County Council and the Environment Agency.

Thames Water maintains commercial flocks of sheep on the borders of several of its reservoirs, which are used as the cheapest way to stop large plants growing and damaging the banks.

Over centuries of London's growth from medieval times to the Victorian age, the natural tributary system of the Thames Water Tideway was converted first into public open sewers and then closed over into covered sewers which emptied directly into the River Thames Water.