Lets go over this again...
Nominet can't be trusted. Nominet works for itself. Nominet should be deemed unfit for its job by B(E)IS, the CMA, Ofcom and any other related regulating/governing entities.
It should probably be absorbed into Jisc/JANET, but from a general governance perspective, a better management/ownership model needs to be found regardless. It either needs to be better deciding what it needs to be, and how it should spend its money(if it should). Its hoovers up money and pisses it away. Its a member-led organisation of sorts, but it should probably become an actual co-operative, where its staff, domain owners and other stakeholders can speak up, too.
As regard to domains themselves, obviously Nominet's market management has been nothing short of horrific. It created new capacity in the form of the "main ".uk tld, gave away domains fully knowing that most would expire unused, pumped up domains prices, and enabled the mass-buying of expired domains by shady buyers. Nominet shouldn't ever be about increasing the quantity of domains sold, it should be about increasing the number of domains put to good use. In the last few years, Nominet has done more than enough to persuade(or further motivate) many website operators to move to non-geo ot other non-UK domains.
They could do with merging .uk/.co.uk/.org.uk/.me.uk listings in the very least, to rescue this shit show.