The boss of Yorkshire Water, one of Britain’s biggest water suppliers, has received £1.3m in previously undisclosed extra pay since 2023 via an offshore parent company, the Guardian can reveal.
Nicola Shaw received £660,000 from Yorkshire Water’s Jersey-registered parent company, Kelda Holdings, in the 2023-24 and the 2024-25 financial years. The size of the fees was not disclosed in the annual report of the regulated subsidiary, Yorkshire Water Services.
The utility company at first refused to detail the pay Kelda Holdings had awarded Shaw, saying the parent company was a “private entity registered in Jersey and subject to separate disclosure frameworks”. Only after the Guardian raised questions about the ability of MPs and bill payers to scrutinise the pay awarded did the company reveal the amount of the two payments.
Yorkshire Water said it complied fully with the regulator Ofwat’s requirements on pay disclosure and bonus payments, and that the extra payments relating to work for Kelda Holdings were paid by shareholders, not bill payers.
Regulated water companies must report directors’ pay in their annual accounts each year, but there is no obligation for parent companies to disclose their pay to the regulator or the public. Companies in some offshore secrecy locations, including Jersey, have no obligation to reveal executive pay.
Water companies have come under intense scrutiny in recent years amid outrage over the sewage flowing into Britain’s rivers and seas at the same time as significant bill increases. Politicians and campaigners have expressed their anger over the million-pound pay packages awarded to top executives, but the Guardian last week revealed that average pay for chief executives still rose by 5% in the 2024-25 financial year.
The government moved in June to ban bonuses for the bosses of water companies guilty of the worst environmental breaches. Yorkshire was one of six companies caught by the bonus ban, after it agreed a £40m payment in March for excessive spills from storm overflows as a result of poor maintenance. It received another £850,000 fine on Thursday for pumping chlorinated water into a stream in 2017.
Gary Carter, the national officer for GMB, a union representing water workers, said: “This is another case of water companies not listening to the outrage and concerns of the public over the payment of unjustifiable salaries.
“The fact that this salary is hidden and not transparent just further undermines the reputation of water companies. This sort of behaviour has got to end.”
Yorkshire’s published accounts reported that Shaw’s pay from that company had dropped by nearly a third in the 2024-25 financial year, from £1,028,000 the year before to £689,000.
The accounts, however, also said that Shaw and the chief financial officer, Paul Inman, had received remuneration from Kelda Holdings, which “is therefore disclosed in the financial statements of that company”.
But Kelda Holdings has no duty to file accounts publicly because of Jersey’s relatively lax laws, and Yorkshire at first declined to say what she was paid by the parent company. Singapore’s government owns a third of Kelda Holdings, with the US investor Corsair Capital, Germany’s DWS and the Australian pension fund SAS Trustee Corporation owning the rest.
The refusal to disclose the pay did not appear to breach any rules, but it meant that MPs and bill payers had no way of knowing whether Shaw’s total pay had increased since the bonus ban. The company said Shaw did not receive performance-related pay from Kelda Holdings, but did not share Kelda’s accounts.
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The revelation of the extra payments means that Shaw’s total pay from Kelda Group for the two years were £1.7m and £1.3m. Inman received £440,000 from Kelda Group in 2024-25, on top of a salary of £662,000.
A Yorkshire Water spokesperson said: “We do not believe that any work our chief executive does on investor-related activities should be paid for by Yorkshire Water customers. For that reason, fees in 2024-25 for work such as investor engagement, financial oversight and management of the Kelda Group were £660k and were paid for by shareholders.
“This fee reflects the critical importance of the work during this period that was led by Nicola, and as a result, shareholders directly invested £500m into Yorkshire Water to support the delivery of critical investment over the next five years, with a further commitment of £600m before the end of March 2027.”
The Labour MP for York Central, Rachael Maskell, said: “With pipes bursting and rivers contaminated, it is shocking to learn that Yorkshire Water’s boss has concealed her £1.3m award. When people across Yorkshire faithfully pay their water bills, they expect better.
“This behaviour makes the case why water should return to public ownership and those at the top held accountable for every penny spent and every benefit taken. I trust that Labour’s expected audit reform and corporate governance bill will ensure transparency across utility companies, when introduced.”
