Boss of stricken Thames Water defends £195,000 bonus and admits mothballed £250m desalination plant should never have been built - as he warns over summer hosepipe bans despite surging bills

Daily Mail​

13-05-2025

The boss of stricken Thames Water today insisted he deserved a £195,000 bonus despite customers facing surging bills - and the threat of hosepipe bans this summer.
Chris Weston defended accepting the bumper sum after just three months in the role, telling MPs he had 'stabilised' the company.
But he acknowledged the supplier is still facing huge problems, suggesting a non-functional £250million desalination plant should never have been built.
Appearing before the Commons Environment Committee, Mr Weston was also grilled about the firm losing 56million tonnes of water every day to leaks.
He said he was 'confident we won't run out of water', but added: 'I'm not confident yet we won't have to restrict usage. That will depend on what weather does and what rainfall happens between now and the summer.'
Thames Water is in at least £16billion of debt and was left on the brink of a possible taxpayer rescue as it was in danger of running out of cash.
It recently won court approval to take out as much as £3billion more in loans, in a deal designed to keep it running into 2026.
Meanwhile, customers have been hit with 31 per cent increases in bills this year - with more pain to come.
Annual average bill changes 2025/26
Company
2024/25
2025/26
Change (£)
Change (%)
Anglian Water
£527
£626
£99
19%
Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water)
£503
£639
£136
27%
Hafren Dyfrdwy
£447
£590
£143
32%
Northumbrian Water
£426
£506
£79
19%
Severn Trent Water
£457
£556
£99
22%
South West Water (south west region)
£520
£686
£166
32%
Southern Water
£478
£703
£224
47%
Thames Water
£488
£639
£151
31%
United Utilities
£486
£598
£112
23%
Wessex Water
£556
£669
£113
20%
Yorkshire Water
£467
£602
£136
29%
Asked about getting a £195,000 bonus three months into his tenure last year, Mr Weston insisted remuneration was not the main reason he joined Thames Water. 'I joined Thames because it matters to society,' he told the committee.
'And I think that within the first three months I did make a difference. I started to put in place the new organisation structure, I started to give people confidence and reassurance about how proud they could be of the job they did and what we were setting out to do.
'And that helped stabilise the company. I think that was important.'
Later he revealed that frontline workers at Thames Water were getting bonuses of between 3 per cent and 6 per cent.
Asked what his own potential bonus was as a percentage, Mr Weston said: 'My 'on target' performance can be 156 per cent.'
He added: 'I accept it is a lot of money and I accept it is considerably more than the front line. We try and… offer packages that are competitive in the market so we can attract and retain the people that we need within the business.'
Mr Weston said the 'crisis' at Thames Water had been 'decades in the making'.
'The company and the management has got it wrong… but equally I think the fundamental problem has been with the regulatory regime,' he said.
'There's lots that goes right, it's absolutely necessary we have a regulatory regime.
'But the regulatory regime needs to attract investment, it needs to allow for companies of different types, operating in different environments, and with different cost bases and also for companies that might be in trouble that they can turn around and improve their performance.
'I would argue the regulatory regime does not do that at the moment.'
Despite choosing investment firm KKR as the sole bid to invest in ailing Thames Water, Mr Weston told MPs it was a 'very fluid situation', with the possibility the company could still fall into public ownership.
He acknowledged that hundreds of millions of pounds in penalties Thames Water faces for missing performance targets made it more difficult for a new investor to come in.
Asked whether, if the current process with KKR fails, it would be too late to go back to other potential investors, or if it would result in a special administration regime, Mr Weston said: 'It's a very fluid situation but those both are possibilities.'
He said it would depend on factors such as what the creditors would do, and added: 'There's no guarantee we would not stay on a market-led solution as opposed to a special administration, but it is a very fluid situation and those are all possibilities.'
He acknowledged the huge desalination plant in Beckton, east London - intended to turn seawater into drinkable water - would not be operational this year, describing the site as a 'big problem'.
'I wonder why it was built in the first place,' he said. 'It's not a good story, it was not a good investment, there are no excuses about it.'
He said membranes used as part of the desalination process are at the end of their life and could not be replaced because there is no testing facility in the UK for new membranes.
Chairman Sir Adrian Montague said the company's financial situation had been 'hair-raising'.
'The fact of the matter is, as we've noted on several occasions, Thames in the last year has come very close to running out of money entirely,' he said.
'There were times in the last year that we had five weeks' liquidity – and running a £20billion corporation on five weeks' liquidity, honestly, it's hair-raising.
'We felt we needed to conserve cash.'
Pressed on why Thames had shelved spending on some projects in recent years, Sir Adrian added: 'It was a funding crunch… I don't think we rode back on commitments.
'We understand that this is work that needs to be done, and there are many, many calls on companies' cash resources.
'We are having to prioritise, and we prioritised asset health and the routine expenses of the business in preference to this big capital project.
'We are still committed to carrying out that work but we can't magic money out of nowhere.
'Our problem is that this business had been under huge funding pressures ever since I joined (in 2023).'
However, he denied Thames Water was a 'failing company'. 'It's not a failing company. It's a company in recovery. We are making progress,' he said.
'This is a good team. You can see how the progress is starting to become apparent.'