Union outcry over payouts to Severn Trent shareholders
A TRADE union has launched a three-pronged attack on Coventrybased water company Severn Trent for its payouts to shareholders, water leakage and the salary of its boss.
The GMB said it had conducted an investigation which revealed Severn Trent shareholders have made almost £1.1 billion in just five years.
The union said shareholders received a total of £190 million in 2017 alone.
It also highlighted the fact that more than 400 million litres of water are lost every day through leaks.
Last month, GMB was critical of the fact Severn Trent’s CEO Liv Garfield received £10 million in salary, bonuses, pensions and other benefits over the past five years.
The figures come from a joint investigation into the accounts by GMB and Corporate Watch as part of GMB’s Take Back the Tap Campaign to bring England’s privatised water industry back into public ownership.
The GMB also highlighted the fact consumer water bills in England and Wales have increased by 40 per cent above inflation since privatisation in 1989 - according to a report by the National Audit Office .
GMB general secretary Tim Roache said: “Forking out billions to shareholders, while bills rocket and trillions of litres of water are wasted shows just how broken the system is.
“We all need water, it’s not an optional extra, it’s absurd that something we all depend on is in private hands delivering eye watering payouts instead of being run for the public good.
“That’s why GMB is calling for the water industry to be brought back into public ownership.”
However Severn Trent said the company was run in a way which balanced the needs of both customers and investors and had a £3.3billion investment programme.
A Severn Trent spokesman said: “We believe that the business should be run for the benefit of all of our stakeholders - our customers, our communities and our investors, and that means we need to balance all of their needs.
“So we have a capital programme of £3.3billion that runs between 2015 and 2020, plus a further £2.9billion spend on operational activities in the same period, which is £1,400 for every customer we serve or £3.4million every day, alongside our dividend policy.”
The company also defended the remuneration of its chief executive and said it offered good value for money.
The spokesman added: “Since joining Severn Trent, Liv has led a significant improvement in the service customers receive - external sewer flooding has been reduced by 62%, internal sewer flooding by 43%, and serious pollutions by 80%, and we continue to offer the lowest bills in Britain at less than £1 a day.”