Inside Nicola Shaw's tumultuous time in charge of Yorkshire Water
Nicola Shaw had been facing scrutiny with customer bills going substantially up, environmental performance plummeting and a huge controversy about secret offshore payments.
It was only three months ago, sitting in a cramped cabin next to a sewage treatment works, that Nicola Shaw told The Yorkshire Post that she was determined to lead “Yorkshire Water 2.0”.
The embattled CEO was facing questions with customer bills going substantially up, environmental performance plummeting and a huge controversy about secret offshore payments.
At the time however, it appeared as if she had convinced the firm’s new ownership structure that she was the right person to tackle this.
Yorkshire Water had recently secured a new investor in Swedish private equity giant EQT taking a 42 per cent stake in parent company Kelda Holdings. It joined Singaporean wealth fund GIC and Australia’s TCorp, an investment partner to the New South Wales public sector, as co-owners.
This was something of a coup for the CEO, with EQT backing her investment plan to improve Yorkshire Water’s decaying infrastructure.
However, this morning Ms Shaw dramatically announced she was standing down, with National Grid’s Nicola Medalova set to start on Monday as CEO designate in a very short timeframe.
She said: “It has been a privilege to lead Yorkshire Water and serve the people of Yorkshire.
“Although there remains a huge amount of work to do, I am extremely proud of what our colleagues have achieved, putting the business on a stronger footing for delivery across all aspects of its work.
“This now feels like the right time to begin an orderly transition to the company’s next chapter.”
Although perhaps it was always obvious that there would be change at the top of the water firm in the near future.
The arrival of new investors over the summer led to a changing of the guard on the company’s board with chair Vanda Murray and six directors departing.
Jon Lewis, the former chairman of Associated British Ports, took over, saying the firm’s investment plan was set to enter its next stage.
This was something Ms Shaw had been leading on, convincing regulator Ofwat that bills should be hiked by 41 per cent over a five year period to pay for an £8.3bn programme of upgrades.
Hundreds of miles of water mains are being replaced, hundreds of millions are being spent on cutting storm overflows and plans are in place to improve bathing water quality in Scarborough, Robin Hood’s Bay and Bridlington.
A £75m project has been completed in Ilkley to increase storage capacity to protect the River Wharfe.
Yorkshire Water has taken on an additional 1,200 staff in the past year to help deliver the programme – a 25 per cent increase to its workforce.
While this was undoubtedly a successful part of Ms Shaw’s tenure, the controversies around pollution and executive pay were never far away.
Last year, the firm was ordered to pay £40m to address its “serious failures” over wastewater and sewage discharges.
It has also faced a series of court cases involving six-figure fines for water pollution - including an £865,000 fine for pumping out millions of litres of chlorinated water into a dike in Barnsley over a month in 2017, killing hundreds of fish in the process.
On Thursday, the Environment Agency handed it its lowest rating - one star - after a 70 per cent rise in incidents in 2025.
This led to the Environment Department slapping Yorkshire Water with a ban on giving bosses bonuses, and the Prime Minister’s official spokesman namechecking it as a struggling firm.
The issues did not just relate to pollution, and recent results found it is one of the worst-rated water companies for customer service.
Earlier in the summer, Ms Shaw - who joined Yorkshire Water as a hugely experienced executive - intimated that the pressure was telling.
“The level of public scrutiny is definitely higher. Intellectually, I knew that would be the case but practically it is very different,” she told this paper.
And then there was the question of whether her continuation was even tenable amid the changes being made by new Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
He is going to give far greater control and oversight to the regions’ mayors, who called into question Ms Shaw’s position after her secret off-shore payments were revealed.
Either way, with a new Nicola coming into post, the public will hope they finally see Yorkshire Water 2.0.