This morning, in front of a railway platform packed with commuters, a group of women made a citizen’s arrest of Mark Thurston, CEO of Anglian Water. The group was part of the Citizen’s Arrest Network (CAN), an activist community that’s seeking to hold the UK’s biggest polluters to account.
Taking matters into their own hands
Just last week, a group from CAN approached eight water bosses, Thurston included, to hand them evidence dossiers. These outlined the damage and pollution that their companies have caused, and the effect it’s had on the public. CAN called on the police to arrest Mark Thurston, making it clear that his crimes were serious and ongoing. Of course, they failed to show up.
So, just after 7am this morning, CAN members approached Thurston and surrounded him at Coulston South station, South London. Holding hands in a circle to prevent him from leaving, one member of the group read him the charges.
CAN is accusing Thurston of three counts of public nuisance. His company, Anglian Water, has failed to maintain its equipment, leading to illegal sewage spills. This, in turn, has risked the public’s access to clean water and caused environmental damage. And finally, according to CAN’s evidence, Anglian has mismanaged funds following bill increases and Thurston’s bonus ban.
Jacking up bills and paying off shareholders
The arrest comes just days after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) granted Anglian permission to raise its prices above the limit set by Ofwat, the water regulator. This new increase will follow a 19% hike in water bills already this year, along with the biggest increase in sewage discharges in 2024.
The CMA appointed an independent group of experts to review Ofwat’s December 2024 decisions. A government press release stated that:
In its provisional decisions, the Group has balanced minimising the impact on people’s bills with the need for companies to have enough funding. This includes funding to meet their environmental and drinking water quality legal obligations, and for investor returns to reflect the risks involved – so companies can raise the money to deliver better outcomes for current and future customers.
The Group has provisionally decided to allow 21% – an additional £556 million in revenue – of the total £2.7 billion the 5 firms requested. This extra funding is expected to result in an average increase of 3% in bills for customers of the disputing companies, which is in addition to the 24% increase for customers of these companies expected as part of Ofwat’s original determination.
Since Thurston became CEO at Anglian Water, the company has received a fine of £62.8m for its repeated failures to fix its shoddy sewage infrastructure. In fact, Anglian is one of the very worst water suppliers in the country for sewage discharge. In the first two months of 2025 alone, 1,347 spills were reported.
Meanwhile, Thurston paid out over £88m in dividends in 2024. Dividends are money that’s meant to come out of a company’s profits to go to its shareholders. And, of course, Thurston was paid nearly £700,000 for his trouble.
So, to recap – we have a company whose infrastructure has decayed to the point that it regularly dumps sewage into the environment. It went to the CMA to beg to jack up water bills even higher than Ofwat allowed it to not one year ago. And yet it had £88m in ‘profit’ the pay out to its shareholders?
But it gets even worse. Anglian Water is currently a whopping £7.72bn in debt. That’s a 10% increase on last year alone. The Guardian found that between 2019 and 2023, around 24% of the money from customers’ bills went straight towards paying off the company’s debt, in spite of the fat pay checks it was also writing for its executives and shareholders.
Holding Thurston to account
If none of that makes any fucking sense to you, don’t worry – you’re not the only one. Public resentment of private water suppliers is growing fast. According to polling from Survation released just last week, a massive 74% of the public back criminal charges for water company bosses. Moreover, 71% believe that water companies are causing environmental damage and climate change.
Isobel Rock, who made the citizens arrest, said:
I’m here to hold Mark Thurston to account for the crimes Anglian Water is committing everyday against our environment and pockets. These water companies are ignoring environmental protections and are focused on shareholder profit making over public safety or keeping bills affordable.
Our water is being polluted by these companies every day and continues to be, despite public uproar. And now our bills are set to increase once again, passing the buck back on to customers. Meanwhile Anglian Water made a profit of nearly £5m last year, the CEO is set to make £700k in with his salary, despite the bonus ban, and pay shareholders millions. All while Anglian has a huge debt that we’re paying for. When are those responsible going to start paying for the damage they create to our environment? We are the victims of their continued failure and we want the police to take us seriously.
Government bodies have spent years issuing fines to water companies for the sewage they dump into our environment, but little has changed. The companies beg to extract more money from customers to fix their infrastructure. And all the while, they siphon off the funds to pay themselves, their shareholders, and their debt-holders.
The system clearly isn’t working. Somebody will pay for the crimes committed by private water companies – that much is certain. We face a stark and simple choice: will it be the public, and the environment we live in, or will it be CEOs like Thurston and his ilk?
Featured image via Unsplash/Chillsession
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