Water Regulation and Pre‐payment Meters

Date01 December 1998
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00104
Published date01 December 1998
This paper provides a study of the use of law to invoke and protect the
interests of poorest consumers of the privatized water industry. It focuses
upon the introduction of pre-payment devices by water companies and the
legal action taken to prevent their use. The context for the study lies in
the privatization of the water industry in 1989, one of the last major acts
in a decade in which the transfer of public enterprises into private owner-
ship had become one of the self-proclaimed ‘flagship’ policies of successive
Conservative governments. The claims which surrounded the application
of the policy to water were familiar: private ownership produced efficiency,
effective management, and attentiveness to customers’ needs. Essentially,
the sale of public assets created benefits for everyone. This article finds
the claim to be false. It considers the social engineering role of law in
attempting to protect the interests of poorest consumers, highlighting the
resources – individual, community, and political – which required mobi-
lization in order to give effect to potential remedies. It concludes by suggest-
ing that not only is access to the law differentiated by power and resources,
but that compliance with it is also mediated by the same inequalities.
Access to a sufficient supply of clean water has long been recognized as a
basic prerequisite of personal and public health.1The struggle faced by
poorest consumers to afford such a supply is not a new one. It has been a
feature of the industry under different forms of ownership – local and
municipal in the first part of this century, under nationalization, and now
through private companies. This paper focuses upon one of the latest
manifestations of this difficulty and the use of law in attempting to secure
the rights and protections which the latest settlement provides to customers
in cases of difficulty. In particular, it considers the use of pre-payment meters
by the water companies as a means of providing their services to customers
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
* School of Social and Administrative Studies, Cardiff University of Wales,
50, Park Place, Cardiff CF1 3AT, Wales
588
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 25, NUMBER 4, DECEMBER 1998
ISSN: 0263–323X, pp. 588–602
Water Regulation and Pre-payment Meters
MARK DRAKEFORD*
1 See, for example, British Medical Association (BMA), Water – a vital resource (1994).

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT