(Reuters) -Britain’s Thames Water awarded bonuses worth 2.5 million pounds ($3.40 million) to its senior staff despite efforts by the country’s government to block the payments, according to documents shared by the UK Parliament’s environment committee.
In a letter to the committee, Thames Water chairman Sir Adrian Montague said no discussions have been held with the government or water regulator Ofwat to recover the payments.
The company’s CEO, Chris Weston, is not part of the Management Retention Programme (MRP) and has not received any related payments, a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
The MRP “was fully disclosed as part of the term sheet in October last year, albeit details were not agreed until Spring 2025. We have since paused implementation,” they said.
None of the retention payments have been funded by customers and full details of the plan were shared with the relevant authorities, the spokesperson added.
The news of bonus payments was first reported by The Financial Times on Wednesday.
($1 = 0.7364 pounds)
(Reporting by Raechel Thankam Job in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)
