Britain’s infrastructure is struggling. We’ve seen stories of concrete falling down in schools, unreliable public transport, and an NHS at breaking point after chronic neglect and the Covid-19 pandemic. But little has captured people’s attention and activism like the damage and disrepair of our sewage system and the disastrous decisions of the companies that own our water.

Currently we’re dealing with sewage in the rivers, rising bills, poorly managed companies that are increasingly “uninvestable“, and a regulator that has fined water companies just £2 despite record sewage spillages.

But how did we get here, and how do we turn the tide? On this episode of It’s Bloody Complicated we discussed just how feasible, desirable, and popular public ownership of water is and highlighted the campaign to get there.

The Compass campaigns team were joined by the Director of We Own It, Cat Hobbs, expert on water legislation Professor Ewan McGaughey, and chair of the UNISON Water Industry Sector Committee Natalie Mladenovich-Haigh to dive into how we got here and how we get out of this mess.

• Cat Hobbs is the Founder and Director of We Own It, an organisation that campaigns for public ownership of public services.
• Ewan McGaughey is a Professor of Law who specialises in law, economics and history at Kings College London. His core research interests are economic and social rights, particularly in the governance of enterprises.
• Natalie Mladenovich-Haigh is the chair of UNISON Water Industry Sector Committee.

We’ve been working with Clive Lewis MP, Green New Deal Rising, We Own It, and more to campaign for changes to ownership and management of water and will be doing more in the coming months. This podcast is one piece of that work – find our more here.