As Thames Water Falters, One Man Sets Out To Fix Troubled Sector

When Jon Cunliffe arrived at the Bank of England in 2013 he had a daunting task: implement the biggest ever clean-up of Britain’s banking system — designed in the wake of the financial crisis — to prevent highly leveraged lenders from collapsing. Tempted out of retirement in 2024, the 72-year-old has been asked to pull off a similar job, but this time as the architect of a reform package to fix the UK’s heavily indebted and wildly unpopular water industry.

For the past nine months, Cunliffe — a career civil servant described by current and former colleagues as someone who is not afraid of saying what he thinks — has been traveling around England and Wales to find out what is wrong with the nation’s water sector. Next week he will reveal what he found. Some believe his recommendations could be the last chance to restore public trust and possibly the finances of a sector that is key for economic growth but which has struggled to contain everything from shareholder dividends to sewage spills.