Thames Water, the financially stricken utility that has spent months fighting for its survival, handed a sign-on fee of one million pounds to its finance chief, according to information obtained by Sky News. The disclosure of the seven-figure payment is likely to intensify scrutiny of how the struggling company rewards its senior executives at a moment when it is widely described as teetering on the very brink of collapse.
The payment was made last month to Steve Buck, who joined the company in April of last year to take charge of its finances. According to the account of the arrangement, the money is understood to have been drawn from an emergency borrowing facility, meaning the sum used to reward the incoming executive came from the very funds the company has been relying on to keep itself afloat during its financial difficulties.
The timing of the award is central to the controversy now building around it. Thames Water has been navigating one of the most precarious periods in its history, and the decision to hand a large one-off payment to a senior figure while the business remains in such a fragile position has drawn immediate questions about the judgement of a company that is under intense public and political pressure over its finances and its performance.
Responding to the revelation, Business and Health Minister Chris MacDonald made clear that he took a dim view of large rewards being paid out under such circumstances. He said he did not want to see executives rewarded for failure, and characterised the company's conduct in recent weeks and months as amounting to increasingly desperate attempts to try and get its business back in order after a prolonged period of turmoil.
The minister also suggested that the payment would do little to reassure the utility's customers, saying he did not believe the people who rely on Thames Water would be at all happy about the arrangement. He linked that discontent to wider anxieties about the service itself, noting that concerns over both water quality and the reliability of water supply weigh heavily on households served by the company and on the public more broadly.
Against that backdrop, the minister pointed to steps the government says it is taking to address the underlying pressures on the country's water system. He said the administration was building nine reservoirs, describing them as the first reservoirs to be constructed in the country for decades, and framed the programme as a response to the shortages of water that have become an increasing source of concern across the network.