Thames Water executives decline bonuses due to company's 'poor performance'
The firm's North Swindon sewer has burst three times in nine months
Thames Water has revealed two of its executives have declined their bonuses this year, due to the company's "poor performance".
CEO Sarah Bentley and CFO Alastair Cochran will forgo all performance-related pay for the financial year 2022/23.
Swindon's water provider has overseen three sewage leaks in the past nine months at its pumping station in Haydon End. One of them led to thousands of fish dying in the River Ray.
According to Thames Water, it's currently in the second year of an eight-year plan to "transform" its operations, following "a legacy of under investment".
Last year, Ms Bentley received £496,000 in bonuses, whilst Mr Cochran was given £298,000.
'It simply doesn’t feel right to take my bonus'
Ms Bentley said: "I am proud of the work my team is doing in starting to address the poor state of our asset base and unacceptable standards of service for our customers.
"Nevertheless, the turnaround plan is not yet where I want it to be primarily due to significant headwinds from extraordinary energy costs, coupled with two severe weather events. These have hit our customer and environmental performance. Against this backdrop it simply doesn’t feel right to take my bonus this year".
Thames Water claims it's made "significant progress" in attempts to improve performance over the past 12 months.
The company's customer call centre was relocated from South Africa to Swindon earlier this year, creating 200 jobs. It has also launched a £1.6bn programme to modernise sewage infrastructure, as well as expanding its leaks repair team to more than 1000 engineers.
In addition, a new performance-related pay structure will be published by Thames Water later this year. This will give greater weighting to customer service and environmental performance, rather than the firm's financial results.