Chiefs at four water companies surrender bonuses
Thames Water was the first of a subset of water companies to announce last week that senior leaders would forego their bonus payments for the 2022-23 financial year.
Thames Water's chief executive, Sarah Bentley, and chief financial officer, Alastair Cochran, along with Yorkshire Water's chief executive, Nicola Shaw, Pennon chief executive, Susan Davy, along with Welsh Water's chief executive, Peter Perry, and chief financial officer, Mike Davis, have voluntarily surrendered their performance-related pay.
The strength of public feeling on river health issues and environmental performance was the most commonly cited reason, with Thames adding wider issues related to its eight-year turnaround programme which is currently only two years in.
While environmental performance for 2022 is yet to be reported by environmental regulators, it is noteworthy that there is not a direct correlation between poor environmental performance in 2021, the last year for which data is currently available, and bonus sacrifice (see table).
Thames said its Remuneration Committee is working on a new performance-related pay structure, to be published later this year, which will better align executive compensation with the priorities of customers and regulators by giving a greater weighting to customer service and environmental performance than financial results.
The moves received a relatively lukewarm reception on social and mainstream media.

Comments