Thames Water has appointed a former British Gas executive as its new boss with a pay package of up to £2.3m a year and tasked with leading a crucial turnaround as it faces mounting debts and controversy over dumping sewage in Britain’s waterways.
Chris Weston replaces Sarah Bentley, who resigned with immediate effect in June amid a backlash over the firm’s poor environmental track record. Weston will take up the role on 8 January.
Thames Water, which is the UK’s largest largest water company with 15 million customers in London and the Thames Valley, has been led by interim bosses, Cathryn Ross and Alastair Cochran, since Bentley’s departure.
Weston joins Thames Water two year after he stepped down as chief executive of Aggreko in November 2021, months after the power generating equipment firm was delisted from the London stock exchange and bought by private equity firms in a £2.3bn deal. He previously spent 13 years at Centrica, eventually taking the top job at its British Gas Services consumer business in 2014, which he held for a year before joining Aggreko.
Weston, who served in the armed forces’ Royal Artillery after university, will now face the challenge of steering Thames Water through a turnaround, and could be paid a hefty pay annual package if he succeeds.
Thames Water is handing its new boss an annual salary worth £850,000, on top of £102,000 in yearly pension payments, and a £15,000 car allowance. He is also eligible for an annual bonus worth up to 156% of his salary – or £1.3m – that could swell his total pay to £2.3m.
Those payments are likely to prove controversial without major improvements to the firm’s performance, with his predecessor Bentley having faced heavy critcism for receiving pay that peaked at £2m in 2021-22. Bentley in May said that she would forgo her bonus and any payments due under long-term incentive plans for the 2022-23 financial year.
Weston inherits a firm that is currently grappling with debts of £18bn and seeking an injection of £1.5bn of cash from shareholders to turn itself around. It is also aiming to increase customer bills by 40% to pay for new investment in its treatment works, pipes and sewage outflows, as it faces huge problems over rising pollution incidents, infrastructure failings and continued raw sewage discharges into the environment.
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Executives told MPs on the environment, food and rural affairs committee this week that if the regulator Ofwat rejected its business plan and the bill rises it has asked for, the company would be left in huge difficulties.
However, Ofwat is currently investigating Thames Water over the £37.5m of dividends it paid to its parent company, Kemble Water Limited, in the six months to 30 September, which could have meant the company breached the terms of its licence.
Thames Water chairman Adrian Montague said that Weston “has a proven track record working in regulated environments, turning round business performance and improving customer experience. He brings strong operational and strategic expertise as we enter this crucial period of delivering our refocused turnaround plan and providing the service that customers rightly expect of us.”
Weston said he planned to focus on “delivering the turnaround that the business has outlined and improving performance over the next few years”.
“I recognise that this business is critical to both society and the UK and how important it is that we restore confidence in our operations and financial position.”