Thames Water is poised to cut more than a hundred jobs as the supplier to London contends with its mounting debt pile this year.
Some 140 jobs are set to be cut as part of a wider reduction of around 300 roles, union GMB announced on Thursday.
This comes after the water firm appeared to come close to needing a government bailout earlier this year, on the back of rising interest costs on its hefty amount of debt.
“The last year has been an extremely challenging year for the business and we continue to take a rigorous approach to financial discipline throughout,” a company spokesperson said.
“We need to make more difficult but necessary decisions to ensure we continue to deliver to our budgets.
“That’s why today we’ve announced a range of measures to reduce our costs further and become more efficient.”
Thames Water, which supplies around 15 million people - including in London - is among the UK’s most geared utility firms at over 70%, meaning the majority of its value is made up of debt.
The debt is largely left over from the time it was owned by Australian investment bank Macquarie between 2006 and 2016 and has risen to around £14 billion in recent years.
Though investors have agreed to provide emergency cash injections to keep the company afloat in recent months, just how long these funds will last remains to be seen.
“We will seek to minimise compulsory redundancies wherever possible, through redeployment and voluntary redundancy,” Thames Water added.