Thames Water chief govt Chris Weston has apologised to prospects and promised to show the failing utility firm round.
“So, absolutely I’m very sorry about the service some people receive, but it will absolutely get fixed.”
It got here after a tense look in entrance of MPs from the Setting, Meals and Rural Affairs choose committee throughout which his personal bonus of £195,000 – which he acquired after simply three months within the function – was known as into query.
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Picture:Chris Weston seems earlier than the Setting, Meals and Rural Affairs choose committee. Pic: PA
The parliamentary listening to coincides with spiralling payments for purchasers, who face paying lots of of kilos extra for his or her water provide over the approaching years.
He defended the payout, saying he had joined the struggling firm in January 2024 as a result of it “matters to society”.
He added: “I think that within the first three months, I did make a difference. I started to put in place the new organisation structure, I started to give people confidence and reassurance about how proud they could be of the job they did and what we were setting out to do.”
Thames Water prospects have confronted vital service disruption lately, together with a boil water discover in Bramley, close to Guildford, final summer time and a 40% rise in sewage spills in 2024.
It has additionally struggled to lift funding, repay its debt pile, which now stands at £19bn after an emergency mortgage prevented it from working out of cash and getting into state management.
Additionally showing earlier than the committee was Thames Water chairman Sir Adrian Montague, who tried to reassure MPs that they might get the agency’s funds again on observe regardless of current moments of close to collapse.
He mentioned: “The actual fact of the matter is, as we’ve famous on a number of events, Thames within the final yr has come very near working out of cash fully.
“There were times in the last year that we had five weeks’ liquidity – and running a £20bn corporation on five weeks’ liquidity, honestly, it’s hair-raising.”
