On the 12th of July 2023, Barry questioned Thames Water bosses “transparency” on how £15.7billion of debt was massaged into £14billion and how 151 workers may end up paying the price for the company’s mismanagement with their jobs.
Thames Water claimed that shovelling money to their share holders is “ancient history”… Barry stated that Sir Adrian and him have “different definitions of ancient”.
The company has to pay interest on its debt. That interest has gone up in line with CPI (inflation). So ultimately guess who is going to pay for it? They say it won’t mean higher water bills for consumers… let’s make sure we hold them to that.
After this Barry challenged the regulator, OFWAT who seem to have encouraged over-leveraging and allowed Macquarie to extract £2.8 billion for shareholders.