Who are the key figures in the sewage crisis, and where are they now? | Water

James Bevan

Sir Bevan, a former Foreign Office mandarin, was director general of the Environment Agency from 2015 to March 2023. He was criticized inside and outside the agency for his failure to control the behavior of water companies, stifling frontline field work, reducing monitoring, failing to protect rivers, gagging staff and, in the face of growing public outcry over the state of English rivers, in an attempt to weaken strict regulations which repeatedly show how waterways are being choked by a cocktail of sewage and agricultural water. pollution.

Bevan said he appreciated the operator self-monitoring system, in which water companies had the power to report their own pollution – described by critics as an assessment of their own duties. The Labor government is putting an end to this practice. Bevan told MPs: “We have quite sophisticated means of verifying this data. »

He was appointed non-executive director of Dwr Cymru, or Welsh Water, a not-for-profit, shareholder-free water company, in February 2025. The company said: “His extensive experience of environmental regulation and public policy… has been constructive and valuable during a period of significant activity, including regulatory reform and investment in the sector.

David Black

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

During his tenure at the regulator, water companies significantly increased their debt burden, above the Ofwat benchmark rate of 60%, created complex offshore structures to minimize tax bills and paid high dividends while neglecting infrastructure. Economist Dieter Helm has called the way private companies manage the water sector “great financial engineering.”

Black left Ofwat in August 2025 after the government’s decision to replace the regulator. He is due to appear at the Weekend of Mistakes Festival 2026 in Hay-on-Wye this month. He will talk about what has gone wrong in the UK’s water industry – and how to fix it – at the £150-a-ticket event.

Richard Aylard

Aylard, a retired Royal Navy officer, joined Thames Water in 2002 as director of corporate responsibility, later becoming director of external affairs and sustainability.

He was at the forefront of public anger over sewage pollution and water cuts in the south-east of England. He remains with Thames Water as a director and special advisor to the CEO. He served as the company’s primary spokesperson on environmental performance, including discussing investment plans for wastewater treatment infrastructure.

Matthew Wright

Wright was chief executive of Southern Water between 2011 and 2016, when the company illegally discharged billions of liters of raw sewage into protected waters in Hampshire and Kent.

A judge fined Southern a record £90 million in 2020 for dumping between 16 billion and 21 billion liters of raw sewage into some of the country’s most delicate environments and falsifying data by “very significantly under-reporting” its number of illegal pollution discharges. Ofwat imposed a record £126 million penalty on Southern in 2019 for the same offenses.

Wright, who was paid more than £5 million during his tenure when the failures occurred, left the company in December 2016 and became UK director of Danish renewable energy company Ørsted until 2020. He then worked at National Grid ESO and was chief operating officer of Exagen Group until February 2024, as it moved into renewables. He admitted the offenses at Southern Water occurred “partly under my watch”.

Suzanne Davy

Davy was managing director of South West Water for five years and finance director from 2015 until her retirement in December last year. She led the company through repeated wastewater pollution and received a two-star rating for its environmental performance.

She was also behind the distribution of water unfit for human consumption to 2,500 homes in 2024, to which she pleaded guilty on March 4.

Davy was paid £803,000 in the last financial year in his role after receiving £191,000 in long-term bonuses.

On leaving, she said: “Running a water company is always interesting, often challenging, but totally rewarding. I have enjoyed taking responsibility for providing a sustainable service to millions of homes.”

Ofwat imposed a £24 million enforcement program on South West Water last summer after a three-year investigation into its failures in managing wastewater treatment works and sewerage networks.

The regulator said the company failed to improve its treatment facilities to prevent discharge of wastewater into the environment, failed to properly manage the contents of its sewers and failed to invest the necessary resources to properly monitor its treatment facilities.

Nicholas Shaw

Shaw, chief executive of Yorkshire Water, had her bonuses banned last year under a Labor law introduced in 2025 to prevent bonuses being paid to the heads of companies seen as the worst at sewage dumping.

Yorkshire Water has been fined £47m in 2024 for excessive discharges from storm overflows caused by poor maintenance. Ofwat said the company regularly discharged wastewater, without ensuring that storm overflow discharges only occurred in exceptional circumstances, which had “resulted in harm to the environment and their customers”.

Shaw has still received additional payments totaling £660,000 from Jersey-registered Yorkshire Water’s parent company, Kelda Holdings, in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 financial years.

Sarah Bentley

Bentley was chief executive of Thames Water from September 2020 to June 2023. She joined Severn Trent and promised an eight-year turnaround for the company, but left with immediate effect after three years following a public outcry over the discharge of raw sewage into rivers and a lack of targets on pollution and sewer flooding.

Bentley said in 2023 she would forgo her bonus for the 2022-23 financial year, but the company was accused of a flimsy publicity stunt after it was revealed she had been paid almost double her annual salary with a pay package of £1.5 million. Bentley has done little to stem Thames Water’s huge debts, which total almost £20 billion, or to reduce record sewage pollution in the environment.

She left during a major Ofwat investigation into illegal wastewater discharges from almost three-quarters of Thames Water’s treatment plants. The regulator fined the company £104 million in June 2024 for regularly discharging raw sewage into the environment. He said almost 70% of the Thames’ sewage treatment plants were experiencing operating problems and the company had failed to manage its wastewater networks effectively.

David Henderson

As chief executive of Water UK, the industry’s trade association, Henderson worked alongside Ofwat to reduce fines for water companies and potential prison sentences for executives.

Henderson is a former Downing Street official who was a long-serving adviser to Gordon Brown and former Labor minister Ruth Kelly.

David Miliband

Miliband was environment secretary in October 2006, when the deal for Macquarie to buy Thames Water was struck. Miliband has been chief executive officer of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a global humanitarian aid organization, since 2013.

Regina Finn

Finn was chairman of Ofwat when it approved the Macquarie deal.

Macquarie embarked on a period of significant financial leverage, debt accumulation and dividend extraction. It saddled Thames Water with significant debt while extracting around £1.1 billion in dividends and interest, leaving it with a legacy of high debt. Thames Water has since admitted the company had exploited its assets for decades.

Finn now works as a director at the consulting firm Lucerna Partners. One of its main customers is Thames Water.