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Thames Water fined nearly £123m, including biggest ever penalty from Ofwat Environment secretary Steve Reed has said the government has launched the toughest crackdown on water companies in history. Last week we announced a record 81 criminal investigations have been launched into water companies. Today Ofwat announce the largest fine ever handed to a water company in history. The era of profiting from failure is over. The Government is cleaning up our rivers, lakes and seas for good. This is a clear-cut case where Thames Water has let down its customers and failed to protect the environment. Our investigation has uncovered a series of failures by the company to build, maintain and operate adequate infrastructure to meet its obligations. The company also failed to come up with an acceptable redress package that would have benefited the environment, so we have imposed a significant financial penalty. We take our responsibility towards the environment very seriously and note that Ofwat acknowledges we have already made progress to address issues raised in the investigation relating to storm overflows. The dividends were declared following a consideration of the Company’s legal and regulatory obligations. 8AM BST: Kantar supermarket numbers 8:55AM BST: German unemployment data 9:30AM BST: ONS working and workless households data Continue reading...

Over 300 rural hospitals had already been identified as being at "immediate risk" of shutting down, regardless of potential cuts.

The year is 1973, some culturally significant things were probably happening on Top of the Pops and I bet one of the Beatles did something too – dunno, I wasn’t there. Wikipedia informs…

Trusts having to ‘think the previously unthinkable’ to make savings demanded by new NHS England boss Hospitals in England are cutting staff, closing services and planning to ration care in order to make “eye-watering” savings demanded by NHS bosses. Rehabilitation centres face being shut, talking therapies services cut and beds for end-of-life care reduced as part of efforts by England’s 215 NHS trusts to comply with a “financial reset”. 47% were cutting services and another 43% were considering doing so. 37% were cutting clinical posts and a further 40% may follow suit. 26% were closing some services and 55% more may do so. Continue reading...