The group of lenders to Kemble Water Finance include ING, Allied Irish Banks (AIB) and the Chinese state-owned Bank of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the Financial Times and Sky News reported.
China’s role in UK infrastructure has been under the spotlight since telecoms groups were forced to strip out Huawei equipment from the UK network and Chinese backers of the Sizewell C nuclear power project were eased out amid security fears.
The announcement raised the prospect of Thames, which has 16 million customers, being temporarily nationalised if it slips into a government-handled administration. Rishi Sunak appears reluctant to pursue this route, although a government project team is examining contingency plans for Thames’s collapse.
Well, if the shareholders are going to do that, it’s going to have to ultimately come out of higher water fees. What is Thames Water charging today?
googles
https://www.thameswater.co.uk/media-library/home/help/billing-and-account/understand-your-bill/charges-2021/charges-scheme-2021-22.pdf
It looks like there’s a small (~20 pound) fixed annual fee per household to pay for infrastructure. The variable cost appears to be 149.62 pence per cubic meter.
I wonder how that compares to over here in the States?
The exchange rate is about 1.26 USD = 1 GBP. A cubic meter of water is 264 gallons. So that’s about $0.00714/gal in variable costs.
googles
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/water-prices-by-state
Okay, so 30 days in a month, 400 gallons, 12,000 gallons/month/household…so even discounting their small fixed fee, Thames Water customers are paying the equivalent of about $85/month, which is higher than 49 out of 50 US states, albeit not radically so.