Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Some of this is quite technical, but these are important issues. The reason I chose that figure, which is not a matter of precise science but a starting point for debate, is a Financial Times article in 2006 suggesting that Ofwat's expectation was that gearing levels for Thames Water should remain below 65% for any project. There was then a debate, in public, between Thames Water and its owners—they have a history in this matter—and the regulator as to what the percentages of borrowing against capital, borrowing against income, and borrowing against profits should be. The company should have sufficient capital to fund the project and should not be giving away its capital by way of dividends such that it has to look elsewhere for funding that it could have had if it had not been paying out capital that it had acquired previously from its investments.