Southern Water boss paid thousands in bonus

Southern Water’s award took chief executive Ian McAulay’s pay and pension pot to £1.1 million.

An annual report found the company had 434 pollution incidents in the year to March 31. The figure was more than the previous three years combined.

The company is the water provider for 2.6 million customers. It also provides sewage services to more than 4.7 million customers across the South – including Sussex.

Responding to questions about his salary, Southern Water said Mr McAulay was the “lowest paid of the water and wastewater companies” and he has been giving 20 per cent of his salary to charity during the pandemic.

Last year, the company was hit with a record £126 million penalty package over “shocking” failures in its sewage treatment sites.

It comes after a probe by Ofwat found that Southern Water had failed to operate a number of sites properly and fixed sewage samples in order to dodge fines.

Customers of the utility company will now receive rebates of £61 over the next five years after Southern Water agreed to the package, which, given the size of the firm, is the largest the regulator has ever imposed.

The watchdog added that Southern Water also manipulated its sewage sampling process, which led to it misreporting information to Ofwat and avoiding penalties in previous years.

Southern Water will refund £123 million to customers through their bills and pay a fine of £3 million.

Southern Water blamed the failures on its previous management which it said had been guilty of “dishonesty”.

Mr McAulay was hired to replace the previous chief executive Matthew Wright.

In its most recent report, Southern Water reported seven serious category one and two events a year to March 31, 2020.

But the number of “less serious” category three events had risen sharply to 427.

The performance was “not acceptable”, the company said and it has invested £54 million to help improve its service.

The firm blamed its own increased reporting of incidents and heavy rainfall.

It said: ‘There is a higher incidence of blockages where flows have been lower, as fats, oils and grease and wet wipes are not flushed to our wastewater treatment works.’

“’Our analysis found one of the biggest causes of pollutions from our assets is the resilience of the power supplies at our sites, which lead to power outages, and occasionally mean we have to restart our works.

“We are working with partners across the South East, including energy network providers, to understand if there is a network issue and how this can be resolved.

“Southern Water said it had put a dedicated team in place with a ‘pioneering’ plan agreed with the Environment Agency ‘to address our unacceptable pollutions’.”