Revealed: Water company bosses demanding millions in wages and benefits – despite rising bills

The fat cats at the water companies that pollute Britain’s seas, rivers and streams are demanding millions of dollars in wages and benefits, while imposing similar sums in fines for their poor performance.

Among the sector’s most lucrative jobs is that of feisty Chris Weston, who became CEO of struggling Thames Water in January and then accepted a £195,000 bonus for his first three months at the company in April.

The payment was made as the company, which is the UK’s largest water and wastewater treatment company, was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Mr Weston, who lives in a sprawling £4m Grade II listed house in Kent with a heated swimming pool and tennis courts, has a salary of up to £2.3m.

Earlier this year he enjoyed a break at a stunning angling retreat on the Rio Gallegos, Argentina, where stays start at £9,000.

Meanwhile, his company has dumped 72 billion liters of wastewater into the River Thames since 2020.

Regulator Ofwat ordered it to pay record fines of £104m in August for failing to deal with sewage spills at more than 150 sewage treatment plants.

In October, Mr Weston was awarded a lifeline of up to £3bn to keep his business afloat as it attempts to restructure over the next year.

The UK’s worst performing water company is Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, run by former Electricity Commission boss Peter Perry.

While raking in a £365,000 salary and paying customers the highest bills in England and Wales, Mr Perry presided over an incredible 117,830 incidents of pollution of public waterways last year – including the dumping of raw sewage into a protected dolphin sanctuary.

To make matters worse, the company was recently fined £40m for covering up its appalling record on leaks and water savings by lying to customers and regulators for three years.

The company now faces a six-figure fine for failing to monitor effluent discharges from sewage treatment and water treatment plants.

It was hit with a £24.1 million underperformance penalty by industry regulator Ofwat in October and placed in the worst-performing “laggard” category.

Despite the disastrous mismanagement, Welsh Water paid a performance-related bonus of £91,364 to Mr Perry in July.

United Utilities, the monopolistic water supplier to seven million people in northwest England, is best known for its disastrous pollution record and the exorbitant salaries of its chief executive.

Steve Mogford, who retired last year, lined his pockets with £30 million in salary and benefits during his 12 years at the helm of the company.

His replacement, Louise Beardmore, pocketed a £420,000 bonus this year, taking her total salary to £1.4 million.

She was at the helm when 10 million liters of untreated sewage spilled into Lake Windermere, the jewel of Cumbria’s beautiful Lake District and a UNESCO World Heritage site, in February.

It followed a series of scandals, including a similar incident two years ago at the lake that turned miles of water bright green.

United distributed almost £340m in dividends to shareholders in the last financial year, driven by record revenues worth more than £5m a day.

Thousands of South West Water customers were told to boil their tap water in May after its supplies were infected with deadly insect pathogens.

People have been rushed to hospital with dehydration, blood in their vomit and diarrhea after ingesting cryptosporidium parasites which leaked into water supplies in Brixham, South Devon.

Just months before the disaster, the supplier’s CEO Susan Davy received a £300,000 pay rise, taking her total income to £860,000. She had brandished a six-figure bonus which would have taken her salary to almost £1 million.

The 55-year-old lives in a large house in Devon bought for £560,000 more than 15 years ago, just miles from the area where hundreds of people fell ill due to a dodgy pipe.

Besides pests, she presided over 58,249 incidents of pollution of public waterways last year.

As Southern Water customers face huge bill increases, company boss Lawrence Gosden pocketed £764,000 in remuneration last financial year, up from £428,000 last year previous.

His company was fined £330,000 earlier this year after raw sewage leaked into a stream near Southampton for what the company said could have lasted almost 20 hours.

Nearly 2,000 fish were killed as faulty equipment at a pumping station released untreated effluent into the environment.

Meanwhile, salaries aren’t much higher than Severn Trent Water CEO Liv Garfield’s. The award-winning company paid him £3.2 million this year, including £584,000 in bonuses, just months after he was fined £2 million for polluting waterways.

Ms Garfield has earned at least £27.7million in total since becoming chief executive in April 2014, according to research by the Financial Times.