‘Injustice for residents’: Islington Council calls for water supply to be renationalised following series of floods

Fixtures and fittings damaged by flooding in Islington. Photograph: Julia Gregory

Water should be brought back into public ownership, according to politicians who say residents have suffered after a series of devastating floods in Islington.

The council agreed a motion calling for renationalisation of water in the UK.

It follows a burst water main on Tollington Road this summer which flooded and damaged homes and companies nearby.

Thames Water put up 13 residents in hotels and is also working to put right damage at eight businesses, including the council’s Sobell leisure centre.

Labour councillor Fin Craig (Arsenal), who proposed the motion, said Barnsbury residents have suffered from a series of burst pipes on Offord Road and pointed out that Thames Water loses 24 per cent of the water it supplies through leaks.

Criticising the amount of sewage water companies have pumped into UK rivers and seas, Cllr Craig told fellow councillors: “I feel we are family, not only do I pay to swim in my own excrement, I swim in yours as well.”

Cllr Praful Nargund (Labour) said residents on Offord Road are living in “constant fear” of flooding after three major leaks in four years.

He said: “It’s an injustice for residents and an injustice that they have not caused.”

He added that water companies have had 30 years since privatisation “to get this right” and that some of the problems in his ward were “caused almost certainly by under-investment”.

Cllr Nargund criticised water supply being in the hands of “a private monopoly” as “we all need to drink, to wash”.

Benali Hamdache (Green) said the UK is “one of the few places in the world that has a privatised water supply, it simply does not make sense”.

Residents in Highbury Quadrant in his ward were without water for three days this summer and he said more needs to be done to protect water supplies.

Earlier this summer, council leader Kaya Comer-Schwartz wrote to Thames Water calling for more preventative work to avoid floods.

Thames Water bosses were put on the spot at a recent policy and performance scrutiny committee.

Head of London planning Simon Moore said the company is replacing mains at several hotspots in Islington, with more work planned.

Thames is also investing £4.5m into ground-breaking machines to scan pipes.

Islington Council has pledged to press Thames Water to invest more to avoid burst water pipes and leaks.

It is also calling on water companies to stop releasing sewage into seas and rivers.