Water Regulation and Pre‐payment Meters

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 ownership 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 mobilization in order to give effect to potential remedies. It concludes by suggesting 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.