Yorkshire Water can no longer hide chief executive's £660,000 offshore payments: The Yorkshire Post says
YORKSHIRE Water’s reputation across this region is likely to sink to new depths following the emergence of previously undisclosed extra payments of more than £1m to its chief executive via an offshore parent company.
It has been revealed by The Guardian that Nicola Shaw received £660,000 from Yorkshire Water’s parent company Kelda Holdings for both the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years. Kelda is registered in Jersey, where there is no obligation to reveal executive pay.
The figures were not disclosed in the annual report of regulated subsidiary Yorkshire Water Services and there was an initial refusal to provide them to The Guardian before they were eventually confirmed.
Yorkshire Water now says that Ms Shaw’s Kelda Group payments relates to investor-related activities she does for the parent company. It said such work had helped deliver hundreds of millions in additional shareholder investment and is separate to her central role at Yorkshire Water, for which she is paid a basic salary of £689,000 a year.
Even if that explanation is accepted, at the very least Yorkshire Water should commit to greater transparency about such payments. The company’s position is essentially that Ms Shaw is worth paying hundreds of thousands of pounds extra because she is able to deliver hundreds of millions in additional investment.
Given Yorkshire Water customers are putting up with rising bills, a hosepipe ban and the firm’s lamentable pollution record, the very least they deserve to know is how much the top boss of the firm is being paid and what she is doing with her time – especially when her Kelda salary is almost equivalent to her Yorkshire Water one. Such payments should be spelt out clearly in future annual reports.