61% of Brits would prefer utilities to be publicly owned and operated, finds poll
October 2023 - Utilities
61% of Brits would prefer utilities to be publicly owned and operated, finds poll: A survey has found that 61% of the British public would rather see utilities companies publicly owned and operated, with 40% of these saying that this should be under all circumstances. The remainder said they would prefer public ownership but privatisation should happen under specific circumstances. On the other hand, 23% said utilities should be owned and operated privately.
The research was conducted by Ipsos, who interviewed a representative sample of 1,000 adults aged between 18-75 years old. Ipsos asked the public if they supported or opposed the nationalisation of several key utilities in Great Britain. These included water, trains, gas/electricity, postal services, other public transport (buses, trams, tubes) and broadband services.
Utilities Findings
The survey revealed the most support for nationalisation was for water utilities companies, with 68% supporting this (only 9% opposed). Closely behind water were the railways, with almost two-thirds in support (65%) followed by gas/electricity (63%), with both of these having just 10% in opposition and the remainder neither supporting nor opposing nationalisation. Postal services had 60% support, found the research, while other public transport had 58%. The lowest support for nationalisation was for broadband services (39%), which also had the highest percentage of people opposing nationalisation (23%).
The research also asked respondents if they thought nationalisation would cause certain features of utilities to get worse, stay the same or get better. These included price, quality of service (QOS), efficiency, standard of customer service and innovativeness. Price was the aspect most people believed would get better, with 58% of the respondents of this opinion. Meanwhile, innovativeness got the least votes for improvement, with only 38% saying it would improve. More than half (53%) said QOS would get better, followed by efficiency (51%) and the standard of customer service (48%).
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