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 England and Wales, for leniency over sewage fines and to commit to meeting MPs by the end of the year to discuss their casework.
Yang and two other Labour MPs – Will Stone and Peter Lamb – gave Maroudas the letter at a meeting in Reading on Friday morning. Yang said after the meeting that the company had agreed to “a scrutiny meeting” with MPs in September.
A Thames Water spokesperson described the meeting as “very constructive”, adding: “No executive directors have received performance-related pay this year. A management retention programme was established as part of our liquidity extension with the objective of retaining senior management during a complex recapitalisation.
“We have paused its implementation. None of the retention payments have been funded by customers. The company’s chief executive is not party to the MRP and has received no payments.”
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.”
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.
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.
The Thames Water spokesperson pointed to the company’s “record levels of investment we have planned to meet our commitments to customers and the environment” and said it was “committed to improving outcomes for the environment and its customers”. They added: “In order to be investable, we and prospective investors have needed to engage in discussions with our regulators about regulatory easements.”
