Is Thames Water placed into special administration by 25 November?
BinaryResolves 25 Nov 2026
Hunch18%
Your forecast
Yes
No
Resolves 25 Nov 2026
How this resolves
The market resolves on a court order placing Thames Water Utilities Limited, the appointed company, into the water industry special administration regime, confirmed by Ofwat or Defra on gov.uk on the day it is made. An order against a holding company does not count. If that source has not published in time, BBC News and Reuters reports of the order settle it.
The pattern behind it
Too few cases
Three of the three verified cases since 1989 were resolved without special administration: Thames Water's own restructuring plan in 2025, Southern Water's recapitalisation in 2021 and the sale of Wessex Water in 2002. The record is unanimous but thin, and the reason it is unanimous matters more than the count: each time, a buyer or a creditor group was willing to take the company on terms the regulator could live with, so the state never had to choose. Thames Water is the first case in which the government wrote down its objections before the regulator decided. Three cases is below the four Hunch requires, so no History is shown.
We found three water companies in the same position since 1989. We looked at every water and sewerage company in England and Wales since privatisation whose owner could no longer carry its debt, and where control was forced to change or a court approved a restructuring. We asked whether it went into special administration or was solved another way. A fourth case, Welsh Water in 2001, fits but could not be confirmed on sources we trust, so it is left out. Three cases are too few for us to show a History figure.
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