‘Complicated and expensive’: Burnham is right about the risks of nationalisation | Nils Pratley

G ood news for Andy Burnham: one of the original 10 water privatisations from the Thatcher-era has returned to public ownership already. Thanks to a complicated turn-of-the-century corporate saga, Welsh Water, serving 3 million people, converted to not-for-profit status in 2001. It has no shareholders. Financial surpluses go “straight back into keeping bills down and looking after your water and beautiful environment”, as the website blurb puts it . How’s it going? After a quarter of a century without dividend-hungry shareholders to feed, has the model proved its superiority? Not exactly. Welsh Water usually has high scores on customer trust metrics but its performance on bills and spills tends to be middle of the pack. Welsh Water recently received a £44.7m “enforcement package” – a fine by another name – from Ofwat for “serious and unacceptable breaches” in operating its sewage plants that “resulted in excessive spills to the environment”. Most companies have copped penalties in the regulator’s industry-wide investigation but, as a percentage of turnover – the regulatory yardstick of seriousness – Welsh Water’s 7.5% was at the high end. On bills, it is above the industry average at £683 a year . Severn Trent-owned Hafren Dyfrdwy, licence-holder in parts of north-east and mid-Wales, charges its households £48 less. A sample size of one is small, obviously. …