Who're the important thing figures within the sewage disaster, and the place are they now?

[ad_1] James Bevan Sir Bevan, a former International Workplace mandarin, was chief govt of the Atmosphere Company from 2015 till March 2023. He has been criticised from inside and outdoors the company for failing to police the behaviour of water firms, stifling frontline fieldwork, lowering monitoring, failing to guard rivers, gagging employees, and when confronted with rising public outcry in regards to the state of English rivers, attempting to weaken the robust rules which repeatedly present how waterways are being choked by a cocktail of sewage and agricultural air pollution.

James Bevan pictured whereas head of the Atmosphere Company. {Photograph}: Home of Commons/PA Bevan stated he preferred the system of operator self-monitoring, by which water firms got the powers to report their very own air pollution – described by critics as marking their very own homework. The Labour authorities is ending the observe. Bevan advised MPs: “We've some fairly refined methods to test that information.”

He was appointed a non-executive director of Dwr Cymru, or Welsh Water, a not-for-profit water firm with no shareholders, in February 2025. The corporate stated: “His in depth expertise of environmental regulation and public coverage … have been constructive and useful throughout a interval of great exercise together with regulatory reform and funding within the sector.”

David Black Black was chief govt of Ofwat from April 2022 to 2025. He joined the regulator in 2012 as director of economics, and was later promoted to chief regulation officer.

David Black pictured whereas chief govt of Ofwat. {Photograph}: gov.uk In his time on the regulator water firms massively prolonged their debt burden, above the Ofwat benchmark of 60%, created difficult offshore constructions to minimise tax payments and paid excessive dividends whereas neglecting infrastructure. The economist Dieter Helm has described the best way personal firms have run the water trade as “nice monetary engineering”.

Black left Ofwat in August 2025 after the federal government’s choice to interchange the regulator. He's scheduled to look on the Weekend of Errors Pageant 2026 at Hay-on-Wye this month. He'll speak about what went improper with the UK’s water trade – and tips on how to repair it – on the £150-a-ticket occasion.

Richard Aylard Aylard, a retired Royal Navy officer, joined Thames Water in 2002 as company accountability director after which grew to become its exterior affairs and sustainability director.

He was on the forefront of public anger over sewage air pollution and water outages throughout south-east England. He's nonetheless at Thames Water as a director and particular adviser to the chief govt. He has acted as a major spokesperson for the corporate on environmental efficiency, corresponding to discussing funding plans for sewage infrastructure.

Matthew Wright Wright was chief govt of Southern Water between 2011 and 2016, when the corporate illegally discharged billions of litres of uncooked sewage into protected waters throughout Hampshire and Kent.

A decide fined Southern a report £90m in 2020 for dumping between 16bn and 21bn litres of uncooked sewage into a few of the most delicate environments within the nation and falsifying information by “very important under-reporting” of its variety of unlawful air pollution spills. Ofwat had imposed a report £126m penalty on Southern in 2019 for a similar offences.

Wright, who was paid greater than £5m throughout his time on the helm when the failings occurred left the corporate in December 2016 and have become UK director of the Danish renewable vitality agency Ørsted till 2020. He later labored at Nationwide Grid ESO and served as chief working officer of Exagen Group till February 2024 because it shifted in direction of renewable vitality. He admitted that the offences at Southern Water had occurred “partly on my watch”.

Susan Davy Davy was chief govt of South West Water for 5 years and was its chief monetary officer from 2015 till her retirement in December final yr. She ran the corporate whereas it was chargeable for repeated sewage air pollution and was given a two-star score for environmental efficiency.

She was additionally in cost when it provided water unfit for human consumption to 2,500 households in 2024, for which it pleaded responsible on 4 March.

Davy obtained an £803,000 pay package deal within the final monetary yr in her position after receiving £191,000 in long-term bonuses.

On leaving she stated: “Working a water firm is all the time fascinating, usually difficult, however completely fulfilling. I've loved taking accountability for the supply of a sustainable service to tens of millions of properties.”

Ofwat imposed a £24m enforcement package deal on South West Water final summer time after a three-year investigation into its failures in managing wastewater therapy works and sewer networks.

The regulator stated the corporate had didn't improve its therapy works to forestall sewage discharges into the setting, didn't correctly cope with the content material of its sewers and didn't put within the assets to observe its therapy works correctly.

Nicola Shaw Shaw, the chief govt of Yorkshire Water, had her bonus banned final yr below a legislation Labour introduced in in 2025 to cease bonuses being paid to the heads of firms discovered to be the worst for sewage dumping.

Yorkshire Water was given a £47m wonderful in 2024 for extreme spills from storm overflows on account of poor upkeep. Ofwat stated the corporate routinely launched sewage, failing to make sure that discharges from storm overflows occurred solely in distinctive circumstances, which had “resulted in hurt to the setting and their prospects”.

Shaw nonetheless obtained additional funds totalling £660,000 from Yorkshire Water’s Jersey-registered mother or father firm, Kelda Holdings, within the 2023-24 and the 2024-25 monetary years.

Sarah Bentley Bentley was the chief govt of Thames Water from September 2020 to June 2023. She joined from Severn Trent and promised an eight-year turnaround for the corporate, however left with quick impact after three years following a public outcry over the discharge of uncooked sewage into rivers and lacking targets on air pollution and sewer flooding.

Sarah Bentley. {Photograph}: Thames Water/PA Bentley stated in 2023 that she would forgo her bonus for the 2022-23 monetary yr, however the firm was accused of a flimsy PR stunt after it was revealed she had been given almost double her annual wage with a £1.5m pay package deal. Bentley did little to stem the large money owed Thames Water took on, which stand at virtually £20bn, or scale back report sewage air pollution into the setting.

She left throughout a significant Ofwat investigation into unlawful sewage discharges from virtually three-quarters of Thames Water’s therapy crops. The regulator imposed a £104m penalty on the corporate in June 2024 for routinely discharging uncooked sewage into the setting. It stated virtually 70% of Thames’s therapy crops had operational issues, and that the corporate had didn't handle its wastewater networks successfully.

David Henderson Henderson was the chief govt of Water UK, the commerce affiliation for the trade, when water firms have been negotiating with Ofwat searching for reductions in air pollution fines and better returns on funding.

Henderson is a former Downing Road official who was a longtime adviser to first Gordon Brown after which David Cameron.

David Miliband Miliband was setting secretary in October 2006 on the time when the deal for Macquarie to take over Thames Water was agreed. Miliband has been president and chief govt of the Worldwide Rescue Committee (IRC), a worldwide humanitarian help organisation, since 2013.

Regina Finn Finn was chair of Ofwat when it accredited the Macquarie deal.

Macquarie initiated a interval of heavy monetary leverage, debt accumulation and dividend extraction. It loaded Thames Water with important debt whereas extracting about £1.1bn in dividends and curiosity funds, leaving it with a legacy of excessive debt. Thames Water has since admitted that the corporate sweated belongings for many years.