London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Monday, Sep 22, 2025

Bonuses for water bosses in England up 20% last year despite sewage failures

Bonuses for water bosses in England up 20% last year despite sewage failures

Water company executives received on average £100,000 in bonuses, despite most firms missing targets
The annual bonuses paid to water company executives rose by 20% in 2021, despite most of the firms failing to meet sewage pollution targets.

Figures show on average executives received £100,000 in one-off payments on top of their salaries, during a period in which foul water was being pumped for 2.7m hours into England’s rivers and swimming spots.

The analysis of water companies’ annual reports found that their bonus pool for executives now stands at more than £600,000 a company on average.

In total the 22 water bosses paid themselves £24.8m, including £14.7m in bonuses, benefits and incentives, in 2021-2022.

This summer, sewage releases have continued to blight the country’s coastline, with holidaymakers told to stay away from the sea at some beaches this week. Data suggests recent discharges have taken place in coastal areas of Cornwall, Cumbria, Devon, Essex, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland and Sussex.

Devon’s beaches are among those where locals and visitors have been urged not to swim due to the human waste pumped into the ocean.

Severn Trent gave out the highest payouts in bonuses, base pay and benefits to executives, topping the chart at £5,939,300, and United Utilities came second, paying £4,218,000.

Richard Foord, the MP for Tiverton and Honiton in Devon, has seen beaches in his constituency marked as unsafe this week as a result of sewage discharges, and said: “Local people and holidaymakers shouldn’t be forced to swim amidst human waste. Devon’s beaches are amongst the best in the world but the government is turning a blind eye while private companies ruin them.”

The south coast has been particularly badly hit by the sewage spills, with Sussex facing beach closures.

MPs from Sussex have written to Southern Water and the Environment Agency asking them to respect and protect the coast.

They called for a plan to end discharges, adding: “In addition to the obvious environmental and community impact, the closure of popular beaches and restrictions on inland waterways causes financial loss to the numerous businesses who rely on our beaches and rivers.”

Brighton & Hove city council’s leader, Phélim Mac Cafferty, called for urgent action from Southern Water after human waste was discharged into a marine protected area.

“Like many, I’m disgusted by the scenes of raw sewage being pumped into the sea in Seaford. This marks another sad and stark day for our environment.

“Seaford is in what’s known as a Marine Protected Area which is an area specifically set up to protect fragile wildlife and habitats. Southern Water urgently need to explain themselves.

“Dumping sewage into the sea is not only harms wildlife, it affects everything from our health, public safety to the local economy. It’s in all our interests that this Victorian malpractice stops now.”

Further sewage alerts were issued on Thursday across popular holiday destinations, with the Isle of Wight particularly affected. There have been overflows, according to the Surfers Against Sewage map, at 12 different places around the island, with swimmers warned they could become unwell if they go in the sea.

Sailor Mary Phillips lives on the Isle of Wight and said: “I live close to a beach that has been marked as ‘no go’ because of sewage discharge this week. Such a loss – many people love to walk, relax, swim – particularly in this warm weather. Here on the Isle of Wight we had very little rain, so ridiculous to blame it on storm floods.”

Hugo Tagholm, head of Surfers Against Sewage, said: “Water companies have flipped from extreme drought to extreme sewage pollution.

“Years of underinvestment is now in plain sight. It’s time that huge water company profits were diverted to properly managing water and sewage, and protect people and planet.

“Our rivers and beaches should not be subject to this type of industrial environmental vandalism.”

Last year Southern Water was fined a record £90m after admitting deliberately dumping vast amounts of sewage into the sea across the south coast.

Thames Water has come under fire for failing to fix leaky pipes, with a hosepipe ban coming into place next week for its customers, and last year gave executives £3m in bonuses, base pay and other benefits.

The Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesperson, Tim Farron, said: “This is a national scandal. These disgusting polluting habits have made beaches unsafe in the middle of the summer holidays and harmed precious British wildlife.

“Hosepipe bans could have been avoided this summer if these water company CEOs bothered to invest in their rusting pipes rather than stuffing profits in their pockets.

“They are putting profit over the environment. Frankly, the whole thing stinks.”

In a report published in July, the Environment Agency said water company bosses should face jail for the worst pollution incidents, describing the sector’s performance in 2021 as the “worst we have seen for years”.

The agency this week said that the risk of surface water floods caused by sudden heavy rain “reinforces the need for robust action from water companies to reduce discharges from storm overflows”.

A Water UK spokesperson said: “Companies agree there is an urgent need for action to tackle the harm caused to the environment by spills from storm overflows and wastewater treatment works. They are investing over £3bn to improve overflows as part of a wider national programme to improve the environment between 2020 and 2025, and leakage is its lowest level on record with further steep reductions planned each year.

“The bonuses of all water company executives are linked to performance and reflect customer and environmental outcomes. Private investment has brought more than £160bn into an industry that was previously starved of cash, while improving water company efficiency by over 70%. That efficiency means costs are lower, allowing bills to remain around the same for over a decade in real terms, while still allowing new investment in resilience projects and reduced leakage.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
Explosive Email Shows Sarah Ferguson Begged Forgiveness from Jeffrey Epstein After Taking His Money
Corrupt UK Politician Ed Davey Demands Elon Musk’s Arrest for Supporting Democracy
UK, Canada, and Australia Officially Recognise Palestine in Historic Shift
Alibaba Debuts Open-Source Deep Research Agent with Benchmarks Rivaling OpenAI
Marcos Faces Legacy-Defining Crisis as Flood Projects Scandal Sparks Massive Tide of Protests
China’s Micro-Drama Boom Turns Stalled Real Estate Projects into Lavish Film Sets
New Eye Drops Show Promise in Replacing Reading Glasses for Presbyopia
'Company Got 5,189 H-1B Visas, Then Laid Off 16,000 Americans': US Defends New $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee
Golf legend tells Omar she should be 'sent back to Somalia' after her Kirk comments
EU Set to Bar Big Tech from New Financial Data Access Scheme
China Bans Livestreaming and AI in Religion Amid Crackdown on Shaolin Temple Scandal
Documents Reveal Mandelson Failed to Declare Epstein-Funded Flights as MP in 2003
Dubai Property Boom Shows Strain as Flippers Get Buyer’s Remorse
Harris Memoir Sparks Backlash from Democrats for Blunt Critiques in ‘107 Days’
Germany Weighs Excluding France from Key European Fighter Jet Programme
Cyberattack Disrupts Check-in and Boarding Systems at Major European Airports
Japan’s ‘Death-Tainted’ Homes Gain Appeal as Prices Soar in Tokyo
Massive Attack Withdraws from Spotify Over Daniel Ek’s €600M Defence-AI Investment
Björn Borg Breaks Silence: Memoir Reveals Addiction, Shame and Cancer Battle
When Extremism Hijacks Idealism: How the Baader-Meinhof Gang Emerged and Fell
Top AI Researchers Are Heading Back to China as U.S. Struggles to Keep Pace
JWST Data Brings TRAPPIST-1e Closer to Earth-Like Habitability
Trump Orders Third Lethal Strike on Drug-Trafficking Vessel as U.S. Expands Maritime Counter-Narcotics Operations
Trump Orders $100,000 Fee on H-1B Visas and Launches ‘Gold Card’ Immigration Pathway
Why Google Search Is Fading and AI Is Taking Its Place
UAE-US Stargate Project Poised to Make Abu Dhabi a Global AI Powerhouse
Federal Judge Dismisses Trump’s Fifteen-Billion-Dollar Suit Against New York Times, Orders Refile
France’s Looming Budget Crisis and Political Fracture Raise Fears of Becoming Europe’s “Sick Man”
Three Russian MiG-31 Jets Breach Estonian Airspace in ‘Unprecedentedly Brazen’ NATO Incident
DeepSeek Claims R1 Model Trained for only $294,000, Sparking Global Debate Over China’s AI Capabilities
SoftBank Vision Fund to Cut Nearly Twenty Percent of Staff in Bold AI Strategy Shift
Intel’s Next-Gen Manufacturing Gets a Lifeline from Nvidia’s Strategic $5B Deal
Erika Kirk Elected CEO of Turning Point USA After Husband Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
Massive Strikes in France Pressure Macron and New PM on Austerity Proposals
Trump Seeks Supreme Court Permission to Remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook
Hillary Clinton’s Reckless Rhetoric Fuels Division After Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
NASDAQ Rises to Record as Intel Soars More Than 20%, Nvidia Gains 3%
Nvidia’s $5 Billion Bet on Intel Reshapes AI Hardware Landscape
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Trump’s Quip on Biden and Google Lawsuit Revives Debate Over Antitrust Legacy
Macron and his wife to provide 'scientific photographic evidence' that she is a real woman
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
×