Locals fight United Utilities

Concerned locals have mounted billboards on vans outside United Utilities’ (UU) Warrington headquarters, highlighting the damage UU is doing to the watercourses in the North. Last year, the company was England’s most polluting water company, with one of its pipes spilling sewage into the River Ellen, near the Lake District, for nearly 7,000 hours in 2022.

The campaign has been organised by the United Utilities Consultative Panel; a group of landowners who lease or manage land owned by the water company and have become frustrated with regular policy changes. The group’s goal is to address concerns raised by locals and to have an input into any decisions made by
UU that may affect local communities.

UU warned last month that its customers’ bills will increase as it spends more money on trying to meet environmental targets.

Lindsay Waddell, a former chairman of the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation and upland gamekeeper, told ST: “Quite how United Utilities can pay millions of pounds in bonuses and dividends at the same time as failing to fund the maintenance and improvement of infrastructure they are responsible for is quite simply a disgrace.”