Wessex Water bosses handed £50,000 in extra pay despite Labour government’s bonus ban | Water industry
Bosses at Wessex Water received a previously undisclosed additional fee of £50,000 from the parent company in the year the company was banned from paying bonuses, the Guardian has revealed.
Chief executive Ruth Jefferson and chief financial officer Andy Pymer were paid £24,000 and £27,000 respectively until June 2025, according to a spokesman for Malaysian YTL group, which owns Wessex Water.
The payments came from Wessex Water Ltd, the parent company of Wessex Water Services Ltd, the regulated water supplier to 2.9 million customers in the south-west of England. YTL said that the payments were not bonuses.
YTL initially refused to disclose the identity of the company making the payments. YTL disclosed the source following repeated questions about the transparency of executive pay arrangements.
The existence of extra payments to Jefferson and Pymer, as well as former CEO Colin Skellett, was revealed in the accounts of Wessex Water Services. The accounts said: “Colin Skellett, Andy Pymer and Ruth Jefferson received salaries for services they provided to other group companies and this is also reflected in the financial statements of these companies.”
However, the size of the fees was not disclosed in the accounts of any of the group companies. They received salaries from the regulated company worth £440,000 for Jefferson and £249,000 for Pymer.
Water company executive pay has come under particular scrutiny after the government banned bonuses for bosses at suppliers guilty of criminal pollution.
Last year, six water companies were banned from paying bonuses. The government also implicated Wessex over criminal convictions over a sewage pump station failure six years ago that killed more than 2,000 fish and caused the company to pay a £500,000 fine. The ban applied to its CEO and chief financial officer.
The spokesman said Jefferson and Pymer received the payments from Wessex Water Ltd between July 2024 and October 1, 2024. Jefferson’s salary was not subject to the bonus ban before the deadline when he took over as CEO. The spokesman said none of the executives “received bonuses from any source” during the year.
“Wessex Water has always been transparent about its financial position and publishes its accounts in accordance with regulatory accounting rules,” the spokesman said.
Sarah Dyke, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesperson and MP for Glastonbury and Somerton, said: “This lack of transparency around bosses’ pay only increases the need to bring water companies into line.
“Wessex Water has gotten away with environmental vandalism and making fools of its customers for far too long. From carelessly polluting beaches and rivers in the south-west with filthy sewage to losing millions of liters of water through leaky pipes.”
A Wessex spokesman said the company “did not ‘carelessly pollute’ beaches and rivers” but said floods from the storm were “part of an outdated sewage system” which it had invested in improving.
MPs and Ofwat, the regulator of water companies in England and Wales, have raised questions about the lack of transparency around payments from other group companies to water bosses.
The Guardian revealed last month that YTL had paid Skellett a £170,000 bonus until June 2025 the same year. YTL said the bonus was not related to Skellett’s work for Wessex Water until June, but rather related to YTL’s ownership interests.
The owners of Yorkshire Water also gave chief executive Nicola Shaw £1.3 million in undisclosed extra pay through an offshore company. Shaw was also allowed to keep the salary after Ofwat determined it was not a performance-related bonus, but admitted it had been a “mistake” not to disclose payments from a separate company after politicians responded with anger.
Jefferson was promoted to lead Wessex Water after serving as chief compliance officer and general counsel. He was paid £440,000 by Wessex Water Services in the 2024-25 financial year. This year he will receive a basic salary of £590,000 before bonuses. Pymer received £249,000 from Wessex Water Services last year.
YTL’s explanation of the source of the extra payments to Jefferson and Pymer changed within a few weeks.
A YTL spokesperson initially said: “The payments did not come from any particular company, but simply from YTL UK, the parent company of several businesses in the country.”
There is no company named “YTL UK” on the UK companies register. After repeated questions, the company accepted that the payments were in fact made by Wessex Water Ltd, which sits just above Wessex Water Services in the group’s complex corporate structure.
Wessex Water Ltd’s accounts make no mention of payments to Jefferson and Pymer. However, the spokesman said Wessex Water Services had not made a misrepresentation because the payments were reported “within the group’s total payroll costs” – an amount that includes the wages of 3,200 people.
The spokesman added that there was “no legal or regulatory requirement to segregate costs” as they were not directors of the parent company.
Skellett has previously said water managers should only receive large pay packages if they perform well. Speaking at a union meeting in 2024, he said the “money had been cut” with the chief executive.
“We get paid a lot of money,” he said, according to Utility Week. “If we don’t deliver what we’re supposed to deliver, we shouldn’t be getting that money.”
