Negotiating an Exception: Glas Cymru and the politics of regulatory descretion in the England and Wales water industry

Abstract

What happens to a regulatory regime when the company that it has been designed to regulate radically changes form? We examine the case of Glas Cymru (GC), which was set up in 2001 and is unique within the England and Wales water industry in being entirely debt financed and operated on a not-for-profit basis. The article argues that the Office for Water Services (Ofwat) has been able to accommodate GC successfully as a unique case within an extant regulatory regime designed for shareholder controlled, for-profit water companies. It has been able to do so because of the confluence of financial and political factors: a low purchase price for GC at the end of 2000 and all-party support for the GC model in the National Assembly for Wales.