> The infrastructure they inherited was never designed for the things it's being asked to do today

I am not British, but this is confusing. Was private capital forced to take on the burden of privatizing the water system? Or did private investors err in their economic analysis? (Or did those investors just assume the problems would happen long after they personally had gotten paid?)

They’ve being paying out dividends and bonuses while running up debt and not investing in infrastructure. Some of these companies are already worthless on paper. Clearly they intend to make as much as possible and then walk away.

They placed a bet on the government allowing water prices to rise to match the level of investment needed, and lost that bet.