Rivers got sewage, workers got 3.5%, the boss got 14%. We can fix this
We need to talk about what a bonus ban means if it doesn't mean anything. Wessex Water — banned from paying bonuses because of sewage pollution — gave its chief executive a 14% salary rise, four times the 3.5% its workers received, lifting her package to £791,000. That's 18 times the median employee, at a company whose defining public achievement is what it puts in rivers.
And this is a pattern, not an outlier: Anglian Water's parent paid its CEO a £500,000 'retention payment' during its own bonus ban; Yorkshire Water's chief received £660,000 via the parent company. The mechanism is always the same — when accountability arrives at the front door, the money leaves through the parent company.
Meanwhile customers' bills rise 21% over five years to fund the infrastructure repairs, and the actual rivers — the swimmable, drinkable, kingfisher-holding commons we all share — wait.
But look: Ofwat is moving on disclosure, MPs are asking questions, and public outrage is the one input this industry reliably responds to. Water is life's commonest miracle; it should never have been a bonus scheme. Imagine, instead, water run for water's sake. Other countries manage it. Rivers full of fish, boards full of engineers.
Sign the petition. There is always a petition — this one is waterproof.