Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | JULY 2022 | 9 Interview B e brave," muses Cox, when asked if he has any advice for his successor. "It's not easy, putting your head above the parapet. You do get shot at – but what I've learnt is it just goes with territory." Brave is a good word to sum up Cox's ten years at the helm of Ofwat. From the midst of the Section 13 debacle when he joined the water regulator, through the ‚ nancial reform of the sector, the bruising Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) appeal and the current row over the state of UK rivers, Cox has never shied away from controversy. Some would say he's even courted it – and we'll ask him about that later. Today, Cox is in a reŠ ective mood as he sits down with Utility Week at the regulator's Bloomsbury o‹ ce, recalling the reforms he's achieved as well as the ones that got away and asking what's next for the water industry as it shapes up forŒPR24. First, let's rewind ten years. Cox joined Ofwat in one of the most di‹ cult periods of its history, with battle lines ‚ rmly drawn between the industry, its investors and the regulator. The Section 13 row was over the regulator's attempted licence modi‚ cations, and it was so cataclysmic that then-chancellor George Osborne found himself ‚ elding personal calls from well-known international investors demanding he sort out this rogue regulator. Into this febrile atmosphere stepped Cox, not an uncontroversial choice given his own background in the water sector (he'd been chief executive of Anglian Water and managing director of Yorkshire Water). He came under immediate pressure from the higher echelons of government and the City to make the "Ofwat problem" go away – but he knew that capitulation could spell the end for the regulator. "If I'd just done what everyone wanted me to do, I would have nuked Ofwat," he recalls, straight talking as he looks to get his message across. Instead, he negotiated a compromise – "a sort of half-way settlement". Regina Finn, the regulator's unloved chief executive, departed shortly a˜ erwards, leaving Cox with another tricky situation on his hands when a hole in the regulator's ‚ nances sent him "cap in hand" to the water companies to raise the millions necessary to fund the PR14 price review. "You can only do that once," he says wryly. Cox set out his stall as a reforming chair from the very start. His view of the water sector was shaped by continued overleaf "

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