Thames Water found itself at the centre of another industry scandal, with the supplier yesterday ordered by Ofwat to hand back over £100m to customers after failing to meet standards for fixing pipe leakages, sewage overflows and environmental protection.

Industry regulator Ofwat has ordered the UK’s largest supplier – which serves 15m customers- to cut bills after its latest annual performance review had found the supplier had fallen short of standards.

The report is the latest blow for the troubled supplier, which has been struggling under a £14bn debt pile,

My suspicion is that utility companies are not generally going to spend more on infrastructure if they have their price limits get cut, especially ones that can't handle their existing debt.

Maybe a better way to deal with this is to say that, for utilities with natural monopolies, like water companies, that aren't doing well, they can be compelled to sell part of their network to a neighboring utility that isn't having problems.