Thames Water may go bust, what does this mean for us?

Pity the poor Thames Water consumer (for the record, I am one). We found out yesterday that the water company only has enough cash to last until next May – thanks to a debt pile of more than £15bn.

- JAMES MOORE

It has also confirmed it paid two fresh dividends worth £158.3m in March and warned it is unlikely to raise fresh funds before December.

It is a fresh blow for the supplier, which has already faced widespread criticism for the levels of sewage leaking into waterways. Events including this year’s Boat Race and Henley Royal Regatta faced warnings over levels of E coli in the water – and pollution incidents increased to 350, up on 331 last year.

The firm has said it is looking for fresh funding to maintain and update its infrastructure after investors pulled the plug on £500m of emergency cash earlier this year; which leaves Keir Starmer with a significant dilemma: whether or not to nationalise (but more on that later...).

Still, there’s no need to panic just yet. The company’s financial travails – writ large in its latest results – are highly unlikely to end in the taps running dry. We aren’t going to witness emergency standpipes in the street and queues outside Tesco for multipacks of Evian.

The real pain for the consumer is coming in the form of much higher bills. Thames Water has managed to declare an “underlying” profit of £140m for the year to 31 March, an improvement of £270m on the previous year, largely down to increasing what it charged customers. Those underlying profits exclude £152m worth of one-off costs incurred during the year.