Severn Trent chief pockets another £3.2m
Amid anger over leaks and sewage spills . . .
Severn Trent’s boss has scooped another multi-million-pound payday despite growing anger at the state of the UK’s waterways.
Liv Garfield, who has run the FTSe 100 water provider since 2014, was paid £3.2m last year, taking her total earnings since she took over the running of the business to £25m.
The pay packet, which was down on the £3.9m award handed out the previous year, included a £358,800 bonus and £1.9m from the company’s long-term incentive plan.
Severn Trent, meanwhile, reported a 0.5pc rise in profit to £509m for the year to the end of March as revenues jumped 11.4pc to nearly £2.2bn. Garfield’s decision to accept the bonus stood in contrast to other bosses in the sector.
The heads of Thames Water, Pennon Group and Yorkshire Water gave up their bonuses amid outrage over the industry’s record on leaks and sewage spills.
But executive pay has continued to balloon. Thames Water revealed this week that its boss Sarah Bentley was still paid £1.6m for the 202223 financial year despite giving up her bonus as she cashed in on a ‘golden hello’ package granted when she was poached from Severn Trent three years ago.
Last month, Severn Trent admitted it should have given sewage problems ‘much more attention and acted faster’ as the company and its rivals struggle to clean up their act and salvage their reputations. The firm was fined £1.5m in 2021 for illegal sewage discharges from four different sewage works.
Government officials have been trying and push water companies to pay more attention to their record on sewage.
Industry regulator Ofwat is leaning on firms to align bosses’ bonuses to pollution targets.
Companies monitor when sewage spills happen and how long they last as part of a range of performance indicators used to set executive bonuses. But they do not tend to monitor the amount of sewage being dumped into waterways.
Opposition politicians have called on the Government to clamp down on the sector amid growing public outrage at the industry’s lack of self-regulation.
‘The environment Secretary [ Therese Coffey] is clearly asleep at the wheel,’ said Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Tim Farron, who called on the water firms to answer for what he dubbed ‘unjustified’ dividend payouts.
Henry Swithinbank, policy manager for campaign group Surfers Against Sewage, has also called for fines and penalties to be ‘clawed back’ from bonuses and dividends to ‘deter profit from pollution’.