Thames Water on brink of collapse as crisis plan drawn up for UK's biggest supplier

Ministers have lined up insolvency specialists to prepare for the potential collapse of Thames Water, reports have suggested.

Environment Secretary Steve Reed signed off the appointment of FTI Consulting to act as administrator in case Britain's biggest water company fails to secure funding from a group of private investors, Sky news reported.

Contingency plans could see the water firm placed into a special administration regime (SAR), meaning it would be put into an insolvency process.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs said: "The Government will always act in the national interest on these issues.

"The company remains financially stable, but we have stepped up our preparations and stand ready for all eventualities, including applying for a special administration regime if that were to become necessary."

After weeks of hearings in the High Court, a funding plan for Thames Water was approved in February as part of a loan deal agreed internally last year.

The utility company, with a debt around £19billion, supplies about 16 million households across London and the South East.

But it has at least £16 billion of debt, and had previously warned it only had enough money to keep running until March 24.

The new financing was designed to stop it from going bust, albeit temporarily.

Appeals against the approval of a plan to restructure Thames Water through a loan of up to £3 billion was later dismissed by Court of Appeal judges.

Thames Water serves around 16 million customers - around 25% of the UK's population - and owns more than 20,000 miles of water mains and more than 68,000 miles of sewers across London, the Thames Valley and the Home Counties.