Call for South West Water boss to give £200k bonus to 'failed' customers

A Plymouth MP has written to the boss of South West Water demanding she gives what he calls a £200,000 “bonus” to customers. Fred Thomas, Labour MP for Moor View, has penned a letter to SWW honcho Susan Davy to raise concern about her bonus despite the poor performance of the utility giant.

The letter has been signed by a cross section of South West MPs and comes as water watchdog Ofwat told SWW to make £24m of improvements after sewage failings.

Ofwat’s proposed enforcement package has been ordered after it found that the Exeter-headquartered company had failed to meet its legal obligations in managing its wastewater treatment works and network.

Mr Thomas today demanded Ms Davy redistribute her nearly £200,000 “bonus” to the customers that he said SWW has failed. In the letter, Mr Thomas criticises the SWW chief executive for taking the cash whilst the financial burden continues to fall on customers, who have just seen their bills increased once again - by 28% on average from April this year.

But, in a letter in response, Ms Davy pointed out that she had received no bonus this year. The company’s remuneration committee “paused” the award of an annual bonus for 2024/25.

However, Ms Davy still trousered a total salary of £803,000 of which £191,000 was awarded as “variable pay”. This is usually, in business terms, a performance-related payment and appears to be deferred into shares for three years. Ms Davy’s overall package was down from £812,000 in 2023/24.

In her letter, Ms Davy said: “I am not immune to the strength of feeling around executive pay, particularly around cash bonuses. It’s always an extremely emotive topic and I understand why that is.

"My remuneration is set, assessed and awarded independently. In previous years I have forgone bonuses when right to do so. For 2025, and already published in Pennon’s Annual Report, no annual bonus has been awarded, with a long-term incentive plan reinvested back into the business as shares.”

Mr Thomas, however, claims that executive bonuses are indefensible, and his letter highlights that there are currently four open criminal investigations into SWW and that the company continues the discharge of untreated sewage into the region’s rivers and seas. It also comes just a couple of months after thousands of residents in the north of Plymouth were left without water for several days.

During that outage, Mr Thomas accused Ms Davy of being “missing in action” as many vulnerable residents were not delivered the water that they needed. In the months following the outage, there have been multiple smaller outages in the same parts of the city, as well as many outages right across the South West, Mr Thomas said.

He lists, amongst these other failings, that some residents are still awaiting compensation they were due following outages. The letter is co-signed by a cross-Party group of MPs from across the South West including Anna Gelderd, Labour MP for South East Cornwall, Steve Race (Labour, Exeter). Andrew George (Lib Dem, St Ives), Rachel Gilmour (Lib Dem, Tiverton and Minehead) and David Reed (Tory, Exmouth and Exeter East).

The letter said: “In light of the ongoing failures in service, it is frankly indefensible that executive bonuses should be awarded. We are therefore calling for you to forego your bonus this year and instead redistribute the sum to the customers South West Water has failed. We urge you to demonstrate accountability and leadership by taking this step”

The letter was sent in the same week as Ofwat announced that SWW would have to spend £24m to improve the region’s water infrastructure, saying that the company had failed to meet its legal obligations. It’s part of Ofwat’s largest ever investigation into the performance of water companies, and comes after the Labour Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act was passed – ramping up fines and giving the regulator more powers to deal with failing water companies.

Mr Thomas said: “I find it staggering that - despite the many failings of South West Water over the last year – SWW’s chief executive is being awarded a bonus in the region of £200,000. Susan Davy is being handsomely rewarded for a record of failing my residents, all whilst putting the financial burden of those failings onto billpayers by hiking their bills. It’s completely indefensible, and I urge her to redistribute her bonus to those people that she has failed.”

Ms Gelderd said: “SWW customers face the highest water bills in the UK, yet the company is failing our communities. People are paying over the odds for a service that doesn’t even meet basic standards.

“From repeated leaks to sewage discharges, residents and businesses in South East Cornwall deserve much better. I do not believe that bonuses should be awarded if the company is failing to deliver its primary function. I will keep holding SWW to account until they provide the clean, reliable water system we pay for and are all entitled to.”

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