Thames Water should have their £2.4 million executive bonus banned for failing to fix leaks

Guildford Liberal Democrats have called on the Government to ban bonuses for Thames Water after revealing they paid their company executives eye-watering sums, despite failing to fix leaking pipes ahead of this summer's drought.

The call also comes after a weekend of severe disruption to water supplies for residents of Cranleigh and other close-by villages, and news last week that Thames Water was looking at implementing a hosepipe ban in the coming weeks.

Thames Water bosses received nearly £2.4 million in bonuses in 2020 and 2021 despite the company losing an estimated 605 million litres of water every day due to leaks (enough to fill 300 Olympic-sized swimming pools).

Zöe Franklin, Parliamentary Candidate for Guildford and Cranleigh, has said the money should instead go into fixing leaking pipes, failing infrastructure and compensating residents who regularly experience water supply issues. In particular, this weekend residents across Cranleigh and other GU5, GU6, RH4, RH5 and RH12 postcodes were without water for days over some of the hottest periods of the year. At the time of writing, there were still residents in these areas experiencing water supply problems.

Water companies have only promised to halve leaks by 2050 despite predictions of a rise in summer droughts as record temperatures continue to be broken.

In total England's water company bosses have awarded themselves almost £27 million in bonuses over the past two years, despite reports they allow a staggering 2.4 billion litres of water to be leaked every day.

In contrast, affected residents have shared with Guildford Liberal Democrats that, despite Thames Water having an automated compensation scheme where they are reimbursed for every 12 hours without water, they have never received compensation for past outages.

Zöe Franklin, Parliamentary Candidate for Guildford, Cranleigh and our villages, added:

"It is appalling that whilst thousands of people across Guildford, Cranleigh and surrounding villages suffer from serious water supply failures and now hosepipe bans too, water company bosses reward themselves with these bonuses despite not even bothering to fix leaks.

"Local residents are experiencing regular disruptions to their water supply, Thames Water promises to sort the problems and then never do. Just this weekend we had large areas of Guildford constituency and borough without water, some for up to five days, on some of the hottest days of the year.

"The worst part is, Ministers are just letting water firms get away with scandal after scandal and residents in our area are sick of it. These are the very same water companies which pollute our local rivers with poisonous sewage, harming animals and people swimming in them.

"Liberal Democrat councillors and campaigners have spent years fighting for change yet Thames Water and the Conservative Government are deaf to our calls. Enough is enough. We demand action. That should start with fixing these leaks, compensating customers properly and then once and for all ending the dreadful practice of pumping sewage into waterways."