Led by Sarah Bentley, Thames Water has been criticized for dumping sewage and failing to control leaks. Photo: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
Just A couple of months after starting work at Thames Water, Sarah Bentley vowed to campaigners that she would clean up the UK's biggest water supplier.
Speaking at the Chalk Stream Pollution Summit , the CEO promised: to do what is right for these rivers.”
“I am fully committed to us playing our part in restoring these iconic bodies of water to their former glory,” she said after meeting three years ago. .
But since then things haven't gone as smoothly as she might have hoped.
Under Bentley's leadership, Thames Water has been repeatedly criticized for dumping wastewater into rivers while failing to do other targets.
< p>In recent weeks it has emerged that leaks at Thames Water have reached a five-year high and the company may miss them again in 2023.
The Thames has also been accused of attempting a «lazy PR stunt» after Bentley announced, that she is waiving her annual bonus, while a report showed that her salary had almost doubled – to around £1.5m – by other means.
Thames Water defended the one-time extra payments, insisting that they are «not related to performance» and are part of a separate package agreed upon when the company hired her.
However, on Tuesday it was suddenly announced that Bentley had resigned and her duties were immediately transferred to colleagues. who stepped down as boss of Thames Water on Tuesday, received £2m in 2022. shatters the foundations of the twist she promised.
But no explanation has been given for her shocking departure, and she leaves behind a legacy that is half-finished at best.
Thames Water supplies drinking water to 15 million people in London and the Thames Valley and made a profit of £536 million in the six months to the end of September.
But the bosses were personally caught in the crosshairs of the board's generosity and huge payouts to shareholders.
Bentley, who has been CEO since September 2020, received £2 million in 2022.
The company has been heavily criticized by Macquarie's former owners for paying over £2.7bn in dividends and taking on more than £2.2bn of additional debt.
Macquarie has always claimed to be responsible investor. The private equity giant sold its last stake in the business for £1.3bn in 2017 and then bought rival Southern Water.
Since then, Thames Water's board has sought to attract investors with a longer-term perspective. views on things like pension funds.
But the recovery process has been difficult.
Thames Water has been repeatedly fined for water pollution, receiving only a fine of £51 million. from regulator Ofwat last year.
2806 Thames Water struggles to control wastewater
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the company accrued another £32 million in fines between 2017 and 2021 for 11 other cases of water pollution.
The water in the company's eponymous river was once so polluted that when comedian and writer David Walliams accused him of causing illness after a charity swim.
Thames continues to battle overflowing water in rainy weather even after the arrival of the Bentley.
Last year, according to the Top of the Poops website, the Thames water discharged sewage 8,014 times, the equivalent of 22 times a day.
The discharges continued for 74,693 hours, or more than eight years in total. – at 378 locations.
After the entire industry pleaded guilty to failing to address wastewater problems, Thames announced plans to invest £1.6bn in its wastewater treatment plant and sewer network to double reduce emissions. by the end of this decade.
He also pledged to take action to reduce the risk of future droughts when water pumped from rivers is replaced with «recycled» and treated wastewater. More water will be transported from Wales via pipelines.
Last summer, company executives were forced to impose a hose ban on millions of customers as their £250m desalination plant in London was down due to maintenance. .
Business was back in the spotlight when residents of Northend, on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border, found that their taps were no longer running. The culprit was a technical problem at a nearby reservoir, and the Thames was forced to distribute emergency supplies of bottled water.
0704 leak
Failure to fix the leak: about 630 million liters are still lost every day. enough to fill 252 Olympic swimming pools, which could make it difficult for the company to get regulatory approval for its drought plans.
The company is also under financial pressure and is seeking a cash injection of around £1bn sterling from investors in recent months.
Bentley's sudden withdrawal on Tuesday is unlikely to ease the situation.
Bentley executives will now struggle to salvage the situation, with Alastair Cochran and Catherine Ross named joint executives directors after her.
Whatever her reasons, Bentley's departure certainly made a splash in the UK's largest and arguably most controversial water company.
Just not the one that she originally planned.
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