Amalgamation
On 10 January 1845 the two companies submitted a memorial to the Health of Towns Commissioners proposing amalgamation. The memorial noted that since 1834 competition had increased between Southwark, Vauxhall, and Lambeth Water Companies and that the "results of that competition were as inconvenient to the public as they were disastrous to the companies, and afforded the very strongest illustration of the truth of the doctrine... that the principle of competition cannot with advantage be applied to the operations of water companies." The effect of competition on the companies was described as "an immense expenditure of capital in utter waste - double or treble sets of mains and pipes being laid down in districts where one set would better have served the inhabitants. An enormous annual outlay, equally in utter waste, -in the salaries of canvassers and commission to agents, who procured tenants; in the bills of plumbers, who changed the service pipes of the tenants from one set of mains to another; in the charges of taking up and relaying roads and pavements on the like occasions; in double and treble sets of turncocks and pipe-layers; and, as the climax of absurdity, a payment of all parochial and district rates in every parish on all the pipes of all the companies, in proportion to the capital expended on assumed profits or interest, which it is needless to say had no existence."
The bill promoted by the two companies successfully passed through parliament, and the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company formed later that year. The area supplied by the SVWC was centred on the Borough of Southwark, reaching east to Rotherhithe, south to Camberwell and in the west including Battersea and parts of Clapham and Lambeth.
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