Welcome to my Blog

I am a semi-retired former Scottish trade union policy wonk, now working on a range of projects. This includes the Director of the Jimmy Reid Foundation. All views are my own, not any of the organisations I work with. You can also follow me on Twitter. Or on Threads @davewatson1683. I hope you find this blog interesting and I would welcome your comments.

Sunday, 27 March 2011

Water PFI

There is an absolutely must read exclusive by Rob Edwards in today's Sunday Herald.

Largely based on the work of Tommy Kane at Strathclyde University, it shows that the taxpayer is spending £4.8bn for sewage plants that cost £600m to build. You might say well that's not new the cost of PFI, and the water schemes in particular, have been widely condemned in the past.

What's new is the scale of performance failure and the concerns that Scottish Water has over compliance risk, including pollution limits. Their performances have been so poor that Scottish Water has imposed financial penalties totalling £7.5m on PFI operators. Scottish Water is now have to spend many more millions putting the problems right.

These are the very same companies that want to take over Scottish Water and run it for profit. Supported by the CBI and the business lobby in Scotland whose best defence is "PFI had not been perfect". You can say that again!

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