Water bosses miss out on £6,500,000 in bonuses after watchdog steps in

Detailed summary

Thames Water is among nine firms that failed to meet the regulator’s standards test (Picture: Reuters) Water industry bosses were blocked from pocketing more than £6.5 million in…

Water industry bosses were blocked from pocketing more than £6.5 million in bonuses over the past year, thanks to a ban triggered by their companies’ failures.

The failures spanned a range of issues, including severe pollution, breaching duties to consumers and – in the case of Welsh water company Dŵr Cymru – three criminal convictions.

Among the bosses missing out is Lawrence Gasden, the Southern Water CEO who was at the centre of a storm last year over a pay rise worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

If the firm had awarded him the maximum bonus possible – 150% of his base salary – Gosden would have bagged more than £800,000 this year.

Alongside Southern and Dŵr Cymru, the other impacted companies were Anglian Water, Northumbrian Water, Severn Trent Water,South West Water, Thames Water, Wessex Water, and Yorkshire Water.

However, Ofwat also highlighted that some bosses were getting hefty amounts of money in other forms, such as unusually large boosts in their pay.

Thames Water CEO Chris Weston got a 14% pay rise this year, while the same firm’s CFO Steve Buck got an increase of 26%.

Such significant hikes risk ‘damaging public trust and creating a perception that companies are circumventing the [bonus ban] rule’, the regulator warned.

A review of the ban has been accelerated as a result, with Ofwat looking into how to combat the risk of it being undermined.

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