Thames Water, the UK’s largest water company employing 8,200 people, is embarking on a cost-cutting mission by initiating a redundancy consultation that could result in 300 job cuts.
The primary focus of these reductions will be on roles within its retail and digital divisions.
This move is part of Thames Water’s broader strategy to improve its financial stability and address its substantial £14 billion debt.
A Thames Water spokesperson told Energy Live News: “Delivering our refocused turnaround plan will strengthen the operational and financial resilience of Thames Water, so that we can continue to meet our customers’ needs, and create a platform from which to accelerate progress, underpinning our business plan for 2025-2030 and beyond.
“However, we know we can’t do everything. The last year has been an extremely challenging year for the business and we continue to take a rigorous approach to financial discipline throughout the company in order to operate within budget.
“We need to make more difficult but necessary decisions to ensure we continue to deliver to our budgets. That’s why today we’ve announced a range of measures to reduce our costs further and become more efficient. This means we are consulting on a proposal which could lead to the potential loss of around c.300 roles.
“We will seek to minimise compulsory redundancies wherever possible, through redeployment and voluntary redundancy.
“Front line colleagues will not be impacted by these proposed changes, with roles at risk primarily in our Retail and Digital functions as well as some other areas. Change does mean difficult decisions and we are focused on supporting our colleagues throughout the process.”
In response to the news, Gary Carter GMB National Officer, said “Thames Water has danced with the devil and now workers are paying the price.
“In the 40 years since privatisation, we’ve seen virtually no investment, systematic asset stripping and billions of public money drained from the system to fill already building shareholder and fat cat coffers.
“As a result, Thames is on it’s knees and water workers are losing their livelihoods. “It’s abhorrent and systematic of the failed experiment that is water privatisation.
“GMB will fight to minimise any compulsory redundancies and make sure our members get every penny they are due.”
