WASP has been looking at some of the bold statements about investment being made by the government and water industry and it turns out that the rosy picture being painted is not what it seems - again.
Strong evidence is now emerging that water companies were certifying that they had sufficient funds to carry out their statutory requirements (not breaking the law being quite a big one) but they were actually cutting massive corners and profiting massively as a consequence.
WASP is asking the Chief Executive of Ofwat - the Financial Regulator that was supposed to stop this sort of thing from happening, what he thinks about reclaiming money that can be shown to have been wrongly taken out as dividends and the massive bonuses we have seen paid to water company CEOs.
We are not talking about bonuses paid to operational staff - they are often also at the rough end of the deal, having to work in difficult situations where squeezed budgets leave them struggling to make the best of what is left after examples like this one from 2019 sucked bill payers' money out of the company.
Thames Water, Britain’s biggest water company, has awarded its former chief executive a £2.8m pay-off even though he was ousted by the board last year for failing to improve performance.
Quote is from the Financial times and here is the article.
This is bill payers money that was not spent on improving a failing service and it seems this activity has been common across the companies for many years. We wait to see what happens with bonuses for Thames Water's current CEO and others who have expressed strong pro environmental principles - and those who have not.
This is the start of a bigger piece of work - Watch this space..
Comments