DWP claimants are being fleeced by Welsh Water

Welsh Water’s (Dwr Cymru) supposed ‘not for profit’ status hasn’t stopped it raiding the welfare of customers in poverty who need support from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Across 18 months, the water and sewerage utility deducted £2.6m from customers’ Universal Credit. Amid a group of 10 privatised joint water and sewage suppliers, it ranked third by proportion of postcodes it covers.

The damning figures sit next to the staggering multimillions the company has paid bondholders and other speculators. And all as it wrecks the environment to boot.

Welsh Water: the ‘not for profit’ nabbing claimant’s DWP benefits

Welsh Water operates under a different model to water and sewerage companies in England. It defines itself as a ‘not for profit’ because it is:

owned by Glas Cymru a single purpose company with no shareholders.

And, it claims that this means it runs it:

solely for the benefit of customers.

However, this didn’t stop the supposed public benefit company from making stonking deductions to claimants’ Universal Credit. Notably, between March 2024 and the close of August 2025, estimates by the Canary suggest it took more than £2.6m from people’s benefits to cover debt arrears.

As it stripped DWP Universal Credit claimants of this, it paid out £200m in debt interest to its overseas creditors. Because while it likes to show off its supposed not for profit credentials, the reality is it’s merely a trojan horse for a different kind of profiteering.

Welsh Water itself describes its model as aiming:

to reduce Welsh Water’s asset financing cost, the water industry’s single biggest cost.

Specifically, it utilises bonds to finance its work, and boasts how its:

Financing efficiency savings to date have largely been used to build up reserves to insulate Welsh Water and its customers from any unexpected costs and also to improve credit quality so that Welsh Water’s cost of finance can be kept as low as possible in the years ahead.

Yet, at the close of 2024, regulator Ofwat greenlit Welsh Water increasing bills 42% by 2029/2030. As a result, Welsh Water customers will have the highest bills in England and Wales. Of course, that’s likely to push many more vulnerable customers into debt arrears. And the Canary data shows how the company clearly has no qualms chasing customers through the DWP deductions regime.

Fatcats and sewage spills: the same old story

What’s more, it’s clear Welsh Water is little different from shareholder-owned companies in England as far as its underinvestment, pollution, and fatcat payouts are concerned.

In December 2024, former Welsh government economy minister Andrew Davies penned a damning report ripping into the company.

He wrote how:

Although privatisation was intended to stimulate investment in the water industry, it has fallen by almost a fifth in the past 30 years, from £2.9bn a year in the 1990s to £2.4bn in 2022. A Financial Times article showed how water companies cut their investment in infrastructure since the 1990s, with most companies, including Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, investing less in the 2020s than they did in the 1990s.

Unsurprisingly, the company has a pollution record to match its chronically underinvested infrastructure.

In 2025, Natural Resources Wales awarded it a 2-star rating for the third year in a row. Like its counterparts in England, Welsh Water has been at the centre of multiple pollution incidents. That same year, the company pleaded guilty to 800 breaches for sewage discharges beyond its legal limit. Initially fined £1.35m, the court reduced this to £120,000 plus £70,237.32 prosecution costs. In October 2025, nearly 4,000 people launched a legal case against Welsh Water and other companies for “extensive and widespread” pollution in the Wye, Lugg, and Usk rivers.

And while Welsh Water bosses aren’t lining their pockets in the millions, they’re still swimming in six figure sums, with ‘variable pay’ – eye-watering bonuses by any other name. These payouts fluctuate because Welsh Water’s board sets this based on performance. Yet, in 2025, base pay for outgoing CEO Peter Perry still closed in on half a million (£460,000) with a target remuneration of £894,000.

That’s a large salary for the boss of a water company wrecking the environment and snatching people’s benefits.

PR sting operation: your friendly neighbourhood water utility

Nevertheless, Welsh Water has gone in hard painting itself every bit the company run in the public interest. So-called ‘social tariffs’ is one way in which it projects this charitable persona. But the amount it’s losing out on to ‘help’ vulnerable customers pales in comparison to the levels at which it’s making deductions.

In the 2025/26 financial year, it forwent circa £16,000 in order to reduce people’s bills. That same period, it clawed back nearly £1.8m in arrears from customers’ Universal Credit.

And notably, social tariff caps have also shot up significantly more than bill increases. In a decade, Welsh Water’s HelpU social tariff scheme cap has soared by 84%. Specifically, in 2016-2017, it capped bills at £190. In 2026-2027, that’s set to be £350 – £190 for sewage alone. In that time, Welsh Water has hiked average bills 56% by comparison (from £437 to £683).

The company has also tried to spin the narrative that its ‘not for profit’ status means it invests in jobs “to support the Welsh economy”. However the 500 “back-office” employees it’s replacing with AI and data “efficiencies” across 2026/27 might be wondering how it figures that.

Privatisation by any other name

Ultimately, it has revealed the true privatised nature of Welsh Water. Because despite its not for profit claims, the company has still continued to line the pockets of its wealthy bondholders and directors.

At best, it’s a not for dividend model that marks only a marginal improvement on England’s shareholder-laden water sector. Bosses profiteer less. But capitalists cashing in through the financial markets are still the clear winners. The losers are still people seeking DWP support, the environment, workers, and the public – whose bills continue to soar.

Once again, it exposes the scandal of commodifying a resource vital to human survival. In a functioning society, access to the most basic materials for life wouldn’t be in question. And they most certainly wouldn’t be a cash cow for greedy profiteers. Welsh Water is a cautionary tale for why anything less than full nationalisation is an egregious, trojan horse-adjacent capitalist scam. And ultimately, it’s one the poorest will inevitably pay for most.

Feature image via the Canary