As long as we're clear that you're making some arbitrary decision that has no bearing on reality. The fact it was a private company that received so much public finding that they had to make it public is just another example of how privatisation doesn't work for national-scale industries.
I'm struggling to decipher this. One of the bigger problems with the public sector is that they get held to ransom by private companies who know exactly how the tendering systems work and how to game them. If NR has somehow worked out how to turn the tables then surely that's a good thing - from a public perspective. If the contractors and subbies aren't fleecing the public then where do you think the fleecing is coming from - or to flip it on it's head - who is profiting?
Something costing more isn't a problem in and of itself when the most important criteria is public safety.
I've dealt with both the DCFS and NHS England when developing software apps and they always make changes that significantly impact the delivery. It's just a known pitfall of working on those types of projects. You make sure you document the deliverables and get a decent legal team to draw up the contracts. If you're not water-tight on what you're expected to deliver then that's on you/your company. If there's no profit in it then why are you bidding for the work? It doesn't make sense.
Again, I'm not entirely sure what you think the problems are. The water companies are an utter disgrace and have cost the country billions - what about that is cheap?
Energy supply has to be viewed holistically because it's a natural monopoly. Just because the various parts have been split up the overall cost to the public is all that matters.
Hiving off profitable parts of each sector - local government, energy, rail, postal services etc. is a huge part of why we're in the mess we're in. Pointing at one part that seems to be working while the whole is falling apart is disingenuous at best.
UK privatisation hasn't been controlled. That's the problem.
The problem is it's funded, which basically allows it to be controlled. Usually anyone chipping in money to anything wants control. I'm not saying this has happened, but I'll eat my hat if it didn't. But being private does not remove your specs/ regulation and knot tying, which is where all the real problem lies from what I see. It's funded as it's a black hole of mess, if it wasn't nobody would take it on. It needs starting from scratch from the bottom up, not top down.
On rail the ransom doesn't come from the main contractors or subbies, it comes from the companies taking on the contracts effectively being signed up to being a hostage. Because that comes at major risk, most of them want major reward. On some contracts you'll make a killing, and on others you lose money, even with a crazy margin in place. It's as crazy as it sounds and I can understand why you might struggle to understand. Anyone working in rial or pricing rail work understands though, very quickly. The main risk is time, always is. The funny thing is they try and penalise you with LD's when a project becomes late, until you point out they're the reason why it's late, then you hand them your delay damages bill.
No, it's not a good thing, as instead of 10 companies tendering the £1m it should cost, all 10 tender £3m as they know the job will take three times longer than it should. Keeps people in a job I suppose, but inefficiency is the wrong way to keep jobs.
The fleecing comes internally, it's self fleecing due to how backwards it operates. For example, we had a job a couple of years back where we were installing 18 national grid installations under a set of tracks, this could have easily been done one a day, with the trains in operation as the calculations and and controls could have made it risk 0. Instead some clown said the project had to be done on nights, in a 2 hour window, so took 5x longer than it should have done. Bare in mind this was a project which had zero track interface. Basically in a 12 hour shift you get 10 hours working time, in a 4 hour shift you get two hours, as it takes time to set up/ get back to where you once were etc. In the end there ended up being more risk as everyone was working in the dark, and no amount of lights can replicate daylight, people were falling over and walking into things every night. Even if it was possible to get more lights/ replicate daylight, it wouldn't be allowed as the lights (not pointing towards the track) would apparently be shinning in the hypothetical train drivers eyes, when there are not even any trains running, bar the odd 10mph freight train.
Other scenarios are, for some check which make take 10 minutes, they don't let you do it in the 20 minute window between trains, with controls, you have to take what is known as a possession, this basically stops all trains for hours and gives you ownership of the track and costs a fortune. Basically you're stopping trains which you don't want to stop, to work at a time when you don't want to be working. These are often over Christmas and bank holidays too, so to get people to actually work those shifts costs a lot more.
Then there's things like service diversions for HS2, say where the new track is crossing a 90mm gas line for the 50m easement width, instead of diverting 50m of 90mm, they divert 200m, of 2 x 200mm. So now that one service crossing costs 10x more, as it's 10x more complex (also 10x more risk too), and there is no usable gain. The gas company gets a pipe larger than it needs (that it doesn't use) and an over engineered spare that by the time it actually needs the spare it's degraded more than the one it's mean to be a spare for. When I've mentioned about 100 times this could all be done much cheaper with less risk, the answer is always "tender as per the docs, so the price is compliant", it's nuts.
You're right, public safety is important. But is bleeding money on waste safe, when that money can be spent on things which could make other things much more noticeably safer? The biggest risk to public and rail workers is time, the longer a project is taking the more the risk adds up. Doing something at 20% risk for 1 man hour is "safer" than 10% risk for a 10 man hours etc.
The deliverables are known, that's the easy bit, they're always way OTT, also known. But the problem is forecasting durations, as you have to basically guess how much you're going to be ****ed around. You have to go fixed price, as this is the only price they want. They don't see the waste though, as it's not as obvious as sending them a £10,000 bill for a meeting for 20 people, which is discussing something which 19 of them don't understand.
The water bills are cheap, it was ~£1 per cubic metre of drinkable (debatable now I know) water when I last looked, it cost more than that for a 500ml bottle of something which is unnoticeably different. I think my bill is <£30 for a 5 bed house and that also includes separate foul and SW systems for the estate, and the FW runs on a rising main (basically it gets pumped up hill, but takes electric, a pump station, and a tank to enable it, so not the cheapest way). This bill is cheaper than my mobile phone bill, far cheaper than broadband (which is far simpler to install), cheaper than electric, gas, and anything else. Water is by far the most complicated and expensive service to install (actually three services including FW and SW) and they bill it at the lowest price. I think they make about 10% "profit", which is fine, but they need to pay out that profit to investors otherwise they would have not invested what they did or bought the shares etc. Sure, they could have invested more and renewed 100 years worth of pipes, but who would invest in that, when the return period would be decades, if ever? The finance charges alone on that would be horrific. One of the few ways they actually make money and improve infrastructure is basically adopting pipe networks which housebuilders and homeowners pay to get installed, these basically get handed over to the water companies for free, and if they didn't all water companies would have gone broke.
I totally get the point of making water public, but thinking bills will stay the same and we will get all the infrastructure upgrades is a complete pipe dream, literally. One of the main reasons these companies pay out dividends is because they have to, as these companies offer practically zero share price growth, and lots of them have lost loads of share value. Same as with a lot of FTSE stocks etc.
Wind and energy are one of the things which we could do, and do well, largely as it can be started from scratch, has had steady upgrades over the years and there's plenty of experience.
100% agree that not controlling the privatisation is the problem, could have been so much better if we retained ownership and tendered it all out against performance targets and actually managed to manage that well. I've not seen much evidence that we have a good track record with his though.
