environment; and the Water Services Regulation Authority, or Ofwat, responsible for setting the price regime that water companies are required to follow and monitoring performance of the new water companies. England and Wales became the only countries in the world to have a fully privatised water and sewage disposal system. In Scotland and Northern Ireland, water and sewerage services remained in public ownership. Since 2001, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, the company which supplies drinking water and wastewater services to most of Wales and parts of western England, has operated as a single-purpose, not-for-profit company with no shareholders, "run solely for the benefit of customers". According to The Independent, the English WSCs are now mostly owned "by private equity firms with controversial tax-avoidance strategies." Public opinion polling carried out in 2017 indicated that 83% of the British public favoured renationalisation of all water services. In the same year, research by the University of Greenwich suggested that consumers in England were paying £2.3 billion more every year for their water and sewerage bills than they would if the water companies had remained under state ownership. Camelford disaster Campaigners alleged that there was a cover-up of the 1988 Camelford water pollution incident because prosecution would have had a negative effect on the privatisation process. A contemporary confidential memo—later obtained under the Freedom of Information Act—from a senior civil servant to the then Minister of State for the Environment, Michael Howard, warned: "Those of the South West Board with a commercial background are deeply concerned by the investigation. They see the timing of any prosecution of the authority as being totally unhelpful to privatisation, while the prosecution of a board member in their view could render the whole of the water industry unattractive to the City." In March 2012, delivering a narrative verdict on the death of Camelford resident Carole Cross, Michael Rose, the Coroner for West Somerset, stated that he harboured the "deepest suspicion" that the true nature of the 1988 disaster was "not revealed immediately because the water industry was being privatised," adding that there was a "deliberate policy not to advise the public of the true nature [of the disaster] until some 16 days after the occurrence of the incident." See also Water supply and sanitation in England and Wales Asset management plan period Notes and references Notes References Bibliography Further reading England Wales Economy of England Economy of Wales Public