I’m sure that you must have seen the press recently about the Chief Executive of Thames Water forgoing her performance related bonus this year.

We don’t know how much that would be but for the last financial year the accounts show that she received £496,000 with an additional £178,000 to be paid in July 2022.

Sarah Bentley joined Thames Water as Chief Executive Officer in September 2020, after working at Severn Trent plc since 2014 so she’s not new to the water industry.

In 2021/2022 she was paid a total of over £2 million including a salary of £750,000, a bonus of £496,000, and £680,000 compensation for bonuses that she lost by leaving Severn Trent.

She probably also received about £550,000 in July 2022 in additional compensation so don’t cry for her giving up this year’s bonus.

The press reports also state that Chief Finance Officer Alastair Cochran will be giving up his bonus this year (according to the accounts this could have been up to 200% of his base salary of £450,000).

There is no mention of the two Operations Directors (Steve Spencer – Thames Valley and Home Counties and Nevil Muncaster - London) who are directly responsible for the efficient running of water and waste water operations.

I wonder if they will receive bonuses this year?

Thames Water Utilities Limited is one of the subsidiaries of Thames Water Limited, which is one of the subsidiaries of Kemble Water Holdings Limited, so it’s all a bit cloudy.

The whole group is owned mainly by pension funds with the two largest being one of Canada’s largest pension funds (32%) and the UK Universities Pension fund (20%).

All other investors are from outside the UK.

The Group stated in their 2022 accounts that they had Regulatory Capital Value (RCV)of £16,641 million increasing it by £1,616 million in the year.

This is important as any increase in RCV allows them to increase our bills.

RCV is the money that they use for major projects like the reservoir and the law says that they have to be able to make a return on RCV from the bills that we pay.

Of every pound that we paid to Thames Water in 2022 over 50p went to pay for the interest on borrowing and return on RCV, 15p paid salaries and less than 20p paid for the operation and maintenance of the network.