Cheap sales, debt and foreign takeovers: how privatisation changed the water industry

Familiar concerns over bosses’ pay, prices and borrowing emerged in the utilities’ early years in private hands, with UK dubbed the ‘dirty man of Europe’There was a time when privatised British water companies were as unpopular as they are now. During the hot summer of 1995, the managing director of Yorkshire Water, Trevor Newton, achieved notoriety when he urged customers to use less of his company’s product by issuing a motivational message: “I personally ha