Why Nicola Shaw’s time as Yorkshire Water chief executive is up - David Behrens

In that respect and no other, Yorkshire Water is a very successful company. Its parent, an outfit called Kelda Holdings, is incorporated in Jersey, where the tax system is famously lenient. Between it and the water subsidiary are at least eight more companies concerned with finance, ‘customer management’ and other nebulous activities. That’s a huge grey area in which to bury information that would cause embarrassment if leaked.

As we all know, leaks are a Yorkshire Water speciality – so it was inevitable that sooner or later the dam would burst.

It happened this week when Nicola Shaw, the underperforming chief executive, was revealed to have been handed bonuses of £1.3m over the last two years – secretly and on top of her regular salary and benefits – from the parent company in Jersey which has no requirement to declare them. They put her total earnings over the two years at £3m.

Let’s put this in perspective: it is just two months since Ms Shaw, in a clumsy attempt at contrition for her firm’s appalling record on leaks and pollution, announced she was declining an annual bonus because it would “not be appropriate”. What she really meant was that she didn’t need it because she was already in receipt of a much bigger sum through the back door.

This was disingenuous at best; dishonest at worst. If you define honesty as the whole truth and nothing but the truth, her defence falls at the first hurdle.

It wasn’t illegal, though. Yorkshire Water’s accounts acknowledge that she received “remuneration for services to other group companies”. They just don’t say how much.

MPs were quick to join the barrel shoot when the truth emerged. Thirteen of them signed a letter calling the back door bonuses a disgrace and an abuse of public trust.

The firm’s drowning public relations department tried to douse the flames, claiming that Ms Shaw “also does some work for the benefit of Yorkshire Water’s parent company, Kelda Group, including investor engagement, financial oversight, and management”.

That makes it even worse. They’re telling us that despite a basic salary of £660,000 she only works part-time; she has spare hours enough for all that other bunkum.

But her PR people hadn’t finished digging a hole for her. (Are they even on the same side?) They said her “investor-related activities” were paid for by shareholders, not Yorkshire Water customers.

And where do they suppose shareholders get their money if not from customers? Honestly, do these people think we don’t understand O-level economics?

Those shareholders, by the way, are not local business people reinvesting in our region’s economy but institutional financiers in Singapore, Germany and Australia. People like that have one thing in common besides money, and that’s a dislike of being made to look foolish.

So let’s examine Nicola Shaw’s record in her three years at Yorkshire Water. In that time, serious pollution incidents have nearly tripled; our county has become the fourth worst for leaks; and the company’s reputation has sunk even lower than in 1995 when it had to take water in tankers across the M62.

In any other business, that would constitute failure on the most epic scale. The directors would close ranks and demand the boss be sacked for bringing the firm into disrepute.

Perhaps that’s what they’re doing now in the seclusion of a Jersey boardroom. They must have known that after all the sewage they pumped into our rivers, the stink would finally blow in their direction.

The edifice is crumbling around them. This week the chief executive of Ofwat, the wishy-washy regulator that allowed the sector to flush itself down the drain, was the first to jump ship. Ofwat is being wound up in the Government’s ‘reset’ of the industry and as its boss, David Black was a lightning rod for its failure.

Nicola Shaw earned six times more than him but her credit has run out. The next under-the-counter payment she receives will most likely be her redundancy cheque.