Severn Trent boss pockets another £3.2m despite fury over sewage leaks

Severn Trent’s boss has scooped another multi-million-pound payday despite growing anger at the state of the UK’s waterways.

Liv Garfield, who has run the FTSE 100 water provider since 2014, was paid £3.2million last year, taking her total earnings since she took over the running of the business to £25million.

The pay packet, which was down on the £3.9million award handed out the previous year, included a £358,800 bonus and £1.9million from the company’s long-term incentive plan.

Severn Trent, meanwhile, reported a 0.5 per cent rise in profit to £509million for the year to the end of March as revenues jumped 11.4 per cent to nearly £2.2billion.

Garfield’s decision to accept the bonus stood in contrast to other bosses in the sector.

Pay row: Liv Garfield, who has run Severn Trent since 2014, was paid £3.2m last year, taking her total earnings since she took over the running of the business to £25m

The heads of Thames Water, Pennon Group and Yorkshire Water gave up their bonuses amid outrage over the industry’s record on leaks and sewage spills.

But executive pay has continued to balloon. Thames Water revealed this week that its boss Sarah Bentley was still paid £1.6million for the 2022-23 financial year despite giving up her bonus as she cashed in on a ‘golden hello’ package granted when she was poached from Severn Trent three years ago.

Last month, Severn Trent admitted it should have given sewage problems ‘much more attention and acted faster’ as the company and its rivals struggle to clean up their act and salvage their reputations. 

The firm was fined £1.5million in 2021 for illegal sewage discharges from four different sewage works.

Government officials have been trying and push water companies to pay more attention to their record on sewage.

Industry regulator Ofwat is leaning on firms to align bosses’ bonuses to pollution targets.

Companies monitor when sewage spills happen and how long they last as part of a range of performance indicators used to set executive bonuses. 

But they do not tend to monitor the amount of sewage being dumped into waterways.

Opposition politicians have called on the Government to clamp down on the sector amid growing public outrage at the industry’s lack of self-regulation.

‘The Environment Secretary [Therese Coffey] is clearly asleep at the wheel,’ said Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Tim Farron, who called on the water firms to answer for what he dubbed ‘unjustified’ dividend payouts.

Henry Swithinbank, policy manager for campaign group Surfers Against Sewage, has also called for fines and penalties to be ‘clawed back’ from bonuses and dividends to ‘deter profit from pollution’.

£5m pay deal for Sainsbury’s chief 

Sainsbury’s boss Simon Roberts saw his overall pay deal for the year to March rise by more than £1.4m to £4.947m

Sainsbury’s boss received a pay deal worth nearly £5million for the past year – as shoppers face soaring food prices.

Simon Roberts, who has been chief executive of the UK’s second-largest supermarket since 2020, saw his overall pay deal for the year to March rise by more than £1.4million to £4.9million.

The pay deal – which was revealed in the company’s latest annual report – includes almost £4million in bonuses, despite the group posting lower profits for the year.

His total pay package is around 229 times that of the average Sainsbury’s worker, who earns a typical £21,635, according to the annual report.

Roberts received a base salary of £899,000, as well as annual benefits of £17,000 and £67,000 worth of pensions payments. 

The 52-year-old also received an annual bonus of £1.7million and long-term incentives worth £2.3million. 

Sainsbury’s finance boss Kevin O’Byrne also saw his pay package improve for the year, according to the report. 

He received a pay deal worth a total of £3.3million, up from almost £3million for the previous year.

It came despite Sainsbury’s reporting a 5 per cent fall in underlying pre-tax profits to £690million for the year to March 4. 

The firm said it spent £560million on improving prices as shoppers came under pressure from rampant food and drink inflation.

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk