Thames Water apologises to customers but defends bonuses

The chairman of the UK's biggest water company has apologised to customers but defended staff bonus payments.

Sir Adrian Montague, of Thames Water, told MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs select committee that the utility firm, which supplies 16 million customers in London and parts of south England, was sorry.

He said: "We know the supply interruptions cause inconvenience and sometimes real hardship, and so I think the right thing to do is to start the discussion of the [company's] turnaround plan by acknowledging we haven't always served our customers as well as we should, and through the committee, apologising to them."

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Customers faced significant service disruption in recent years, including a boil water notice in Bramley, near Guildford, last summer and a 40% rise in sewage spills in 2024.

It's also struggled to raise investment, repay its debt pile, which now stands at £19bn after an emergency loan prevented it from running out of money and entering state control.

Despite the massive debt pile, Sir Adrian defended paying bonuses, saying the company was in "a competitive marketplace" and "we have to keep staff".

"It's true that this business, like many businesses, needs to reward its staff effectively", he told committee members. "We do need to reward [staff] competitively."

If bonuses were not paid, "people will come knocking, they'll try to pick out of us the best staff we've got", Sir Adrian added.

"But the amounts of bonuses paid to staff is very small compared with the capital cost of the works that we were considering," he said.

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In the first three months of his tenure, which began in January 2024, Thames Water's chief executive Chris Weston accepted a bonus of £195,000 as part of his £2.3m pay package.

His bonus can be up to 156% of his salary as a bonus, while frontline workers can only earn between 3% and 6%, he said.

When approached by Sky News on Tuesday, Mr Weston said he was sorry for the service that the customers received and "it's not where we would like it to be, everyone is very committed in terms of trying and sorting it out".

Customer bills are to rise 35% to about £588 annually per household by 2030, a figure which Thames Water is seeking to increase.

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