It is not really the place of a critic to offer advice. But sometimes the urge is overwhelming, so here goes. If you are the director of communications for a huge, hated utilities company seen by the public to be responsible for endless discharges of sewage into major watercourses whenever its plants are overwhelmed, do not invite a documentary team in until you have your house in order. If you do, do not say: “The impression given is that the Thames is dirtier than five, 10, 15 years ago. I don’t believe that’s true! But I don’t have the evidence.”
Thames Water: Inside the Crisis is a two-part documentary by Barnaby Peel. He was granted access for six – let’s call them tricky – months, with the company facing an ever-shortening “liquidity runway”, as the CEO, Chris Weston, insists on calling it. This means that, with an operating profit of about £140m a year and debts of £15bn, largely accrued during the happy days of 2006-17, when £2.7bn was paid out in dividends while debt tripled, the company will run out of cash by June 2025 unless a quick way is found to turn all that red black. We follow Weston and his team as they try to persuade the regulatory body, Ofwat, that the best means of doing this is to raise customer bills by up to 53%.
I suppose, if pressed, I would have another piece of advice. If you are the CEO of a huge company trying to pass on the effects of epic historical mismanagement to customers and Ofwat refuses to let you, do not complain about “how invasive and influential” it is, nor add “especially around dividends”. Do not then say of your company’s dreadful situation: “I want to fix it. I don’t know how it got this way.” It will make you look thick at best and disingenuous at worst.
While the senior management wail about unfair media stories and the need to “change the narrative”, the frontline staff try to keep sewage out of rivers. There is 26-year-old Josh, the new manager of the struggling Mogden sewage works, one of the largest in the country and known by its handlers as “the Beast”. (They call Josh “Harry Potter”, but admire his skills and willingness to help with everything that needs to be done.) The old hands there include Marcus, Bob and Dave, who have decades of experience among them. They remember better times, when everyone took pride in the job and the place was spick and span. “But we need more people,” says Bob. “They just cut back and cut back on everything.” Josh notes – before he leaves for another, less hopeless job – that the company is running in part on the remaining goodwill and diligence of the old guard. “The team is doing absolutely everything it can and it’s still not enough,” he says at his exit interview. “All we’ve needed is the cavalry and they haven’t come over the hill.”
Points of light in the darkness are the new wastewater and bioresources director, Tessa Fayers, and the new chief operating officer, Esther Sharples (“Thames Water has categorically underinvested … We’re at the stage now where assets don’t wobble – they fail”). They have the confidence to admit to and take responsibility for the problems they have inherited and the competence to tackle them – at least, as best they can in the absence of much support or any money.
When (in the second episode) the “liquidity runway” is extended by a short-term loan of £3bn from creditors, Fayers and Sharples all but roll their eyes in disbelief. If pressed again, I would advise handing over the company to them and watch shit get done, instead of pumped into waterways.
Inside the Crisis provides a lucid explanation of the historical and present situation and a phenomenal portrait of the kinds of people that comprise a business (and how they are distributed across the hierarchy). Directors of communications should certainly study it. The public should watch, too. Hopefully, they will divert their ire from the employees they see on the flooded streets, or picking dead fish out of stinking streams, to the unseen powers who deserve it (including Margaret Thatcher’s government, which privatised water services in England and Wales in the first place, and Ofwat; both get an easy ride here).
The possibility of the company being temporarily taken back into public ownership via special administration is touched on, but it would have been good to hear more about it – mostly so the public knows that this is a weapon in the arsenal if and when other privatised companies begin to fall apart. There is always more mess coming down the pipes.
