I’VE been struck by two recent media headlines. The first concerned South West Water (SWW) and the second about the ownership of fostering and children’s homes in England.

These two stories highlighted much of what’s wrong with this country; how corporate greed has been allowed to prosper; how regulations fail to protect tax and bill payers; and the apparent impotence of successive governments to do anything about it.

Shocking record

So SWW has the worst environmental record in England from data analysed by Friends of the Earth.

Quite why FoE are having to highlight these failings while the Environment Agency sits on its hands and Ofwat offers a slap on the wrist is all compounding the problem.

In Devon we pay the second highest water bills having seen them rise by 39% since 2024.

Much of our tourist economy is adversely affected by raw sewage and in some cases tap water was unfit for human consumption. And while all this is going on, the company sees fit to pay out £100,000s in bonuses to its bosses. To then try and justify this behaviour is a disgrace and an insult to our intelligence.

The government is to produce legislation around the water companies, and the new Prime Minister has been making all the right noises.

It will be a great opportunity for him to show he means what he says. The privatisation of the water companies has been a disaster.

Not for the senior executives or the shareholders, but for us the customers and bill payers, and the environment too. Criminality has occurred and yet no one has been held to account.

Greed has triumphed and failure rewarded. Radical reform is required, tinkering at the edges just won’t do.

We’ve been fleeced!

How have successive governments allowed this to happen. Our money, that should have been invested in infrastructure, has been syphoned off to pay dividends that increases share prices leading to big bonuses for the bosses. In some cases, the revenue stream from our water bills has been used to leverage borrowing which again has been used to boost dividends.

Now, bills are having to increase to pay for the interest on these debts let alone the investment for the crumbling, neglected infrastructure. All this has happened in plain sight, waived through by the regulators.

We’ve been fleeced. My colleague Cllr Paul Arnott is organising a water summit this Autumn. If government won’t act, we’ll need to step up.

Immoral earnings

Private equity companies and sovereign wealth funds now own or partly own 11 of the 20 largest providers of fostering and children’s homes in England.

Well done the Common Wealth think tank for highlighting this and the general secretary of Unison for saying what needs to be said.

Wouldn’t be a problem but the provision is often poor, overpriced and profits syphoned abroad paying no tax. Local authorities bear some of the blame by allowing statuary services to be out-sourced and now find themselves beholden to the market.

It’s time to bring these services back in house, or only use ethically sound companies genuinely interested in vulnerable children’s wellbeing.

Using services for vulnerable children as a way of making money is obscene and then to double down on this by using tax evasion loopholes beggars belief.

At Devon County Council we are looking to unravel years of outsourcing.

It can’t happen overnight not least because we no longer have the in-house capacity or skills, but at the very least we must change procurement rules to allow us to exclude amoral and unethical companies. If we are clear in our own minds about what is right and what we want to achieve, then we will get there.

Councillor Julian Brazil

Leader of Devon County Council