Latest news with #watercompanies
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Water chiefs' pay rises to average of £1.1m despite ban on bonuses and outrage over pollution
The pay of water company chief executives in England and Wales rose by 5% in the last financial year to an average of £1.1m, despite a ban on bonuses for several companies and widespread outrage over the sector's poor performance. Total pay reported by water companies reached £15m in 2024-25, up 5% on £13.8m the previous year, according to Guardian analysis of 14 companies' annual reports. Water companies have been under scrutiny in recent years over their record on the environmentally damaging discharges of sewage into Britain's rivers and seas. Politicians and campaigners have also reacted angrily to bill increases allowed in April by the regulator, Ofwat. The pay figures raise questions about the effectiveness of the government's efforts to limit water executives' pay. Ofwat gained powers last year to insist that bonuses were paid by shareholders rather than through customers' bills, before new rules in June that allowed a ban on bonuses for bosses of companies guilty of the most serious environmental damage. The biggest pay increase was enjoyed by Keith Haslett, the chief executive of Affinity Water. He was awarded an extra £844,000, doubling his total pay to £1.6m. Portsmouth Water's boss, Bob Taylor, also doubled his pay, to £754,000. Six companies – Thames Water, Anglian Water, Southern Water, United Utilities, Wessex Water and Yorkshire Water – were banned from paying bonuses for the 2024-25 financial year to their chief executives and chief financial officers. The bonus ban did appear to have an effect, with pay falling 8% to £5.5m across those six suppliers. Most of that drop was driven by Thames Water, whose boss, Chris Weston, received £1m, after he and three predecessor chief executives received a total of £1.7m the year before. Despite the bonus ban, Southern Water awarded its chief executive, Lawrence Gosden, an 80% pay increase to £1.4m. After the Guardian revealed the increase, the environment secretary, Steve Reed, said Gosden should turn down the extra money. Southern Water said the pay increase complied with the rules. A spokesperson said it was not a bonus but part of a 'two-year long-term incentive plan'. Not all the money was paid during the financial year, and he may not receive all of it if Southern fails to achieve an adequate environmental rating. Sophie Conquest, lead campaigner at We Own It, a group campaigning for public ownership of water, said: 'The public is rightly angry about the obscene levels of cash being handed over to the private water bosses. 'What has their highly valued commercial brilliance delivered for us? Water bills hiked by 30% and the ongoing vandalisation of our rivers and lakes. No new reservoirs built in 30 years, and 3bn litres of water lost daily to crumbling pipes. 'Never in the field of essential public services has so much been earned by so few for doing so little.' Pay for chief financial officers pay fell 3% to £7.6m for the 12 water companies who disclosed it, although that decline was driven by a steep drop from £1.3m to £636,000 for the since-departed Alastair Cochran at Thames Water as the company neared collapse. Aside from Thames, CFO pay rose by 7% on average during the year. The highest-paid water boss was Liv Garfield, of Severn Trent, a FTSE 100 company that supplies 4.6m households across the Midlands and north Wales. She was granted £3.3m during the financial year. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion The lowest-paid water chief executive was David Hinton, of South East Water, who received £456,000 – still well above the £270,000 salary for the head of the NHS. Luke Hildyard, the executive director of the High Pay Centre, which campaigns against 'excessive' pay, called for water company salaries to be limited to 10 times the lowest earners. 'Many people have found it hard to reconcile the litany of financial, environmental and customer service disasters variously afflicting these companies with top pay awards that have frequently exceeded £1m,' he said. 'Is a clean, reliable water supply really so contingent on these seven-figure pay awards?' A government spokesperson said: 'Undeserved bonuses for water company bosses have now been banned as part of the government's plan to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas for good. We also have ringfenced customers' bills to ensure investment must be spent on new sewage pipes and treatment works, not bonuses. 'Any instances of companies trying to circumvent the new rules are completely unacceptable. The government will leave no stone unturned against any bosses being made these payments.' A spokesperson for Water UK, a lobby group, said: 'Executive pay in the water industry is independently determined by remuneration committees, which abide by the laws and regulations set by government. 'Water companies are focused on investing a record £104bn over the next five years to secure our water supplies, end sewage entering our rivers and seas and support economic growth.'
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Call to make wet wipe producers pay for polluting England's waterways
Wet wipe producers should be charged to remove their pollution from England's waterways, the author of a government review into reforming the sector has said. Sewage has been a critical factor in the devastating pollution of our waterways, but other sources of pollution include microplastics, consumer products such as wet wipes, and the byproducts of modern manufacturing, such asPfas ('forever chemicals'), as well as fertiliser and pesticides from farming. Many of these have been linked to harmful effects on human health and the natural environment. The fairest way to deal with this, Sir Jon Cunliffe, a former Bank of England deputy governor, said, could be to apply the 'polluter pays' principle, whereby the company behind the pollution contributes towards its removal. 'The alternative is for everyone to pay for it through their bills, and the question is, should we spread that among everybody, or should we go through a polluter pays route? So I think, really, we should look at those routes,' he said. It has been a landmark week for the water sector, after Cunliffe published a major review containing recommendations on how to clean up England's filthy rivers and seas. The regulator Ofwat is to be abolished, the government has pledged, and a new, powerful, super-regulator created to better hold water companies to account. Campaigners welcomed many of the recommendations, in particular ending the self-monitoring of water companies, which currently voluntarily publish information on how much sewage they dump. Citizen scientists have argued for years that this system is open to under-counting, and have tried to shed light on the true amount of human waste in waterways: under new proposals sewage spills will be automatically published online. But there are those who felt this was a missed opportunity. The environment secretary, Steve Reed, took nationalisation out of the scope of the review from the outset, and also told Cunliffe not to consider more radical approaches such as turning companies into not-for-profits. This despite the fact that it is the mismanagement of water companies as much as the dumping of sewage that has enraged the public. So what of the idea that polluters – the upstream companies that generate some of the worst pollutants in our waterways such as wet wipes and Pfas – should pay? 'One of the best ways to deal with stuff not going into our rivers is not to let it into the sewers in the first place,' Cunliffe said, 'Why do we need wet wipes?' 'I have some sympathy for the water companies,' he said, 'because the drinking water system is closed and no one can touch it unless authorised to do so. The wastewater system is open. Anybody can put anything down the loo, and then at the treatment works, I've seen literally huge machines taking wet wipe mountains out of the sewage system.' Water companies claim that wet wipes, which shed microplastic particles and also build up into major blockages, are the main cause of sewage pollution. John Penicud, Southern Water's managing director for wastewater, said recently that 'the majority of wastewater pollutions are caused by wet wipes, fats, oils and grease being flushed down toilets and sinks', and called for wet wipes to be banned. The EU is introducing quaternary treatment, a more advanced method than that used in the UK. This has powerful filters that remove these trace chemicals from the water supply, but is expensive, so the bloc is looking at making the producers of these chemicals pay a levy that would then be used to create these treatment plants. Producers would be required to cover at least 80% of the costs associated with the sewage treatment upgrades necessary for removing these substances from wastewater. Cunliffe thinks the UK could look at adopting a similar approach for wet wipes; as a side-effect this would make plastic wet wipes more expensive, which would discourage their use. His report has recommended looking at adopting the EU laws in the UK, and investigating the prevalence and impact of these micropollutants in the environment and on human health. This way, he says, 'it's not the water bill payer who pays to take it out, but the people who make and buy the products … Pfas and so on will require quaternary treatment, and there are currently three levels of sewage treatment. To build another would be expensive.' The question, he said, was whether the user or the polluter paid. A Water UK spokesperson said: 'Removing Pfas 'forever chemicals' and other micropollutants from the water environment is a huge challenge because current sewage technology was never designed to deal with them. We need a national plan from government for upgrading sewage treatment that is paid for by chemical manufacturers instead of water bill payers, as well as a ban on Pfas products that will otherwise keep making the problem worse.'
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Make wet wipe producers pay for polluting England's waterways, says report
Wet wipe producers should be charged to remove their pollution from England's waterways, the author of a government review into reforming the sector says. Sewage has been a critical factor in the devastating pollution of our waterways, but other sources of pollution include microplastics, consumer products such as wet wipes, and the byproducts of modern manufacturing, such asPfas ('forever chemicals'), as well as fertiliser and pesticides from farming. Many of these have been linked to harmful effects on human health and the natural environment. The fairest way to deal with this, Sir Jon Cunliffe, a former Bank of England deputy governor, said, could be to apply the 'polluter pays' principle, whereby the company behind the pollution contributes towards its removal. 'The alternative is for everyone to pay for it through their bills, and the question is, should we spread that among everybody, or should we go through a polluter pays route? So I think, really, we should look at those routes,' he said. It has been a landmark week for the water sector, after Cunliffe published a major review containing recommendations on how to clean up England's filthy rivers and seas. The regulator Ofwat is to be abolished, the government has pledged, and a new, powerful, super-regulator created to better hold water companies to account. Campaigners welcomed many of the recommendations, in particular ending the self-monitoring of water companies, which currently voluntarily publish information on how much sewage they dump. Citizen scientists have argued for years that this system is open to under-counting, and have tried to shed light on the true amount of human waste in waterways: under new proposals sewage spills will be automatically published online. But there are those who felt this was a missed opportunity. The environment secretary, Steve Reed, took nationalisation out of the scope of the review from the outset, and also told Cunliffe not to consider more radical approaches such as turning companies into not-for-profits. This despite the fact that it is the mismanagement of water companies as much as the dumping of sewage that has enraged the public. So what of the idea that polluters – the upstream companies that generate some of the worst pollutants in our waterways such as wet wipes and Pfas – should pay? 'One of the best ways to deal with stuff not going into our rivers is not to let it into the sewers in the first place,' Cunliffe said, 'Why do we need wet wipes?' 'I have some sympathy for the water companies,' he said, 'because the drinking water system is closed and no one can touch it unless authorised to do so. The wastewater system is open. Anybody can put anything down the loo, and then at the treatment works, I've seen literally huge machines taking wet wipe mountains out of the sewage system.' Water companies claim that wet wipes, which shed microplastic particles and also build up into major blockages, are the main cause of sewage pollution. John Penicud, Southern Water's managing director for wastewater, said recently that 'the majority of wastewater pollutions are caused by wet wipes, fats, oils and grease being flushed down toilets and sinks', and called for wet wipes to be banned. The EU is introducing quaternary treatment, a more advanced method than that used in the UK. This has powerful filters that remove these trace chemicals from the water supply, but is expensive, so the bloc is looking at making the producers of these chemicals pay a levy that would then be used to create these treatment plants. Producers would be required to cover at least 80% of the costs associated with the sewage treatment upgrades necessary for removing these substances from wastewater. Cunliffe thinks the UK could look at adopting a similar approach for wet wipes; as a side-effect this would make plastic wet wipes more expensive, which would discourage their use. His report has recommended looking at adopting the EU laws in the UK, and investigating the prevalence and impact of these micropollutants in the environment and on human health. This way, he says, 'it's not the water bill payer who pays to take it out, but the people who make and buy the products … Pfas and so on will require quaternary treatment, and there are currently three levels of sewage treatment. To build another would be expensive.' The question, he said, was whether the user or the polluter paid. A Water UK spokesperson said: 'Removing Pfas 'forever chemicals' and other micropollutants from the water environment is a huge challenge because current sewage technology was never designed to deal with them. We need a national plan from government for upgrading sewage treatment that is paid for by chemical manufacturers instead of water bill payers, as well as a ban on Pfas products that will otherwise keep making the problem worse.'
Bloomberg
6 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
The UK's Great Water Experiment Has Failed
Investors buying a substantial stake in a UK bank must undergo an assessment of whether they have the reputation, integrity and financial soundness to be an owner. A similar process applies to acquirers of oil and gas producers. Even buyers of football clubs face a 'fit and proper' test of their suitability. No such requirement applies to the owners of water companies. This never made sense. Jon Cunliffe, former deputy governor of the Bank of England, seems to agree. A key recommendation of the Independent Water Commission that he chairs is to give a future combined industry regulator the power to block changes of ownership, set leverage levels and, in some circumstances, to give direction to the ultimate controller of the company. Such powers are 'necessary guardrails' in water, he said this week, presenting the conclusions of the commission's 464-page final report. For some critics, its proposed overhaul doesn't go far enough; all the same, the significance of the shift in regulatory philosophy shouldn't be underestimated.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- The Guardian
Country diary: Swimming in the satin sea, suddenly it turns to filth
My usual summer swim spot is on the lazy, green Yorkshire Derwent. But after school on the hottest Friday of the year, we fancy a change and head for the coast with friends. We love the beach at Hunmanby Gap for its sand, sea, views of the seabird-stacked Bempton cliffs and the almost complete lack of commodification – even the delightfully ramshackle clifftop cafe closes early. The kids spend hours enacting splashy paddleboard piracy. As the sun sinks, I swim past them, and past gentle breakers into a perfect sea of soft, blue taffeta ripples. But 40 metres out, the surface texture changes from satiny to fuzzy. At first I think it's floating seaweed, but my husband has a better view from his paddleboard. 'Urrgh! Sewage slick, go back!' There's been no rain and we checked the discharge map, but despite laws in place to protect us and the environment, and real-time data beamed to my phone, I've still ended up swimming in illegal filth from a green-tick beach. It's a familiar story, one in which, extraordinarily, our water companies are being investigated for corporate criminality. I thought I couldn't be more angry, but now there's a new twist, as some companies appear to be adopting new tactics that subject swimmers to more exclusion, persecution and misinformation. Bristol Water recently closed access to a popular reservoir on hot days and Severn Trent Water is threatening swimmers at Bartley reservoir with costly legal action for an unauthorised dip while permitting other water sports. As usual, they cite safety. But while every drowning in this sort of setting is a tragedy, cycling, running and horse riding all have far higher fatality rates. The number of experienced cold-water swimmers who get into trouble is extremely small, and the health benefits mean we're much better off doing it than not. Water companies could do far more to keep us safe by cleaning up their act and promoting safe swimming at sites including reservoirs, as happens in France and Scotland. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that they dislike us. When the CEO of Water UK linked the awareness of the sewage scandal to the rise in wild swimming, there was more than a hint of a Scooby-Doo subtext: 'We'd have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids.' Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
