Labour MPs urge Thames Water to recover £2.5m paid to executives in April

The Guardian

5 days ago

Thames Water should claw back £2.5m in bonuses that were paid to executives in April, 27 Labour MPs representing constituencies served by the utility have urged.
The MPs said it was 'disgusting' that the company was hiking water bills 'to pay for executives' failings when those same executives were receiving multimillion-pound bonuses'.
In a letter to Thames Water's director of corporate finance, Fred Maroudas, they called for the company to scrap its next planned round of bonuses in September and reinvest the money into water infrastructure.
The letter from 27 Labour MPs in areas served by Thames Water, coordinated by Yuan Yang, the MP for Earley and Woodley, set out demands for the company, including resolving the most severe cases of pollution and failure highlighted by their constituents.
It also urged Thames to drop its request to Ofwat, the regulator, for leniency over sewage fines and to commit to meeting MPs by the end of the year to discuss their casework.
Yang and three other Labour MPs – Will Stone, Peter Lamb and Sean Woodcock – gave Maroudas the letter at a meeting in Reading on Friday morning. The Guardian has contacted Thames Water for comment.
Thames Water, which supplies 16 million customers in London and south-east England, is scrambling to stabilise its finances and agree a rescue plan funded by its creditors to avoid the prospect of temporary nationalisation.
It posted annual losses of £1.65bn for the year to March, while its debt pile climbed to £16.8bn. In May, it was handed a £122.7m fine, the biggest ever issued by Ofwat, for breaching rules on sewage spills and shareholder payouts.
In a statement, Yang said that more than 140 of her constituents had complained of unresolved leaks, water problems and spiralling bills. Thames customer bills have gone up from £488 to £639 a year.
'I see Thames Water's failure reflected in my inbox every day in casework from constituents regarding long-lasting disruptive roadworks, untransparent and incorrect bills, and leaks that have gone for years without repair,' she said. 'To add insult to injury, while these outrageous failings persist, customers are drowning in increased bills – hiked by an average of 31% for our constituents.'
Sign up to Headlines UK
Get the day's headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning
after newsletter promotion
Calvin Bailey, the MP for Leyton and Wanstead, said his constituents had dealt with repeated sewage overflows near their homes and a local nursery and raised concerns about pollution in local rivers.
The Guardian revealed in July that Thames had already paid bonuses totalling £2.46m to 21 managers on 30 April and was refusing to claw the money back. The water company said at the time that its retention plan was set up 'with the objective of retaining senior management during a complex recapitalisation that will see the company return to a stable financial and operational foundation'.
Ministers have banned six water companies, including Thames Water, from awarding bonuses for this financial year after seven major pollution incidents. The ban applies only to the most senior roles including the company's chief executive, the chief financial officer and the chair. Chris Weston, the chief executive of Thames Water, voluntarily declined his 300% bonus this year.
Weston told MPs last month that the company was 'extremely stressed and operating in very difficult circumstances'. He said that to turn things around would take between five and 10 years.