Water: the monstruous regiment

By Richard North - August 18, 2022

It is instructive to see the Telegraph run a piece on Geoffrey Boycott complaining about a “guy from cycling reforming English cricket”.

It is right to do so, of course, as is Boycott’s complaint perfectly valid. Referring to the review of cricket led by Sir Andrew Strauss, drawing on the “expertise” of a wide range of sports figures including Sir Dave Brailsford and Sir Clive Woodward, Boycott observes sarcastically that David [Brailsford], a British cycling coach, will “know a lot about cricket”, while he is equally caustic about Clive Woodward, a former rugby union player.

What would be helpful to see, though, is the same degree of concern expressed about the hiring of Nicola Shaw. a “transportation” specialist, with recent experience of the National Grid, to run Yorkshire Water, despite having no relevant qualifications or operational experience in the water industry.

But the paper could equally do a number on Sarah Bentley, CEO of Thames Water, the organisation that has announced a hosepipe ban just as the rains came, presumably to compensate for its leakage rate of 589 million litres a day, making up about 23 percent of its total water supply.

To equip her for her future greatness, Bentley left school to spend a period between 1989 and 1990 at the University of London attending a course on English and theatre studies, before moving on to the University of Kent in 1993 to take a BSc Hons in management science with computing.

Thus qualified, she managed to find employment in a company then called eLoyalty, described as “a global customer experience company that designs, builds and operates captivating omnichannel customer experiences on behalf of the world’s most innovative brands”.

Back in England in 2002, at the tender age of 29, she managed to get herself appointed as CEO of Datapoint, a company described as providing IT services and IT consulting, claiming to be “one of the longest-standing and most recognised of the companies operating in the Unified Communications sector”.

This brought her to BT Global Services as VP, Strategy, Marketing and Propositions, a brief tenure which then took her in 2009 to Accenture, another IT consulting firm, as an executive partner.

Nearly six years later, she switched horses to become chief customer officer at Severn Trent Water, adding a nice little earner to her portfolio in 2019, when she also became a non-executive director of Lloyds Bank.

With such a stunning lack of experience, the “leakiest” water company in the country, Thames Water, decided she was just the person to head their company, offering her a £3.1million “golden hello” for signing on as chief executive, in addition to her eye-watering annual pay and bonuses last year, which rose to £2million.

Finding time also to chair the gender equality leadership team, of Business in the Community, a voluntary post she has held since April 2021, Bentley is another of that gilded elite, an overpaid member of the leader caste, who lacks any qualifications or operational experience for her current day job, gliding effortlessly from post to post, living off the fat of the land.

Unsurprisingly, she has discovered that she is “passionate about the water sector”, as one would be on getting a remuneration package of £2 million a year, for a job for which one lacks any relevant qualifications or experience.

Sadly, though, neither Shaw nor Bentley are outliers. In the Mail recently, we see an article headed, “Women flood to the top of embattled industry”, noting that “Whatever its problems, water is a sector where female bosses flourish”.

Not only do we have Shaw and Bentley, we also have Bentley’s former boss at Severn Trent, Liv Garfield, CEO since 2014. Having read German and French (Modern and Medieval Languages) at the all-female New Hall, Cambridge, her path to the upper echelons of the water industry was typically circuitous for this new breed of CEO.

She started with a year working at the British Consulate in Brussels and then, like Bentley, found a temporary home at Accenture, despite having no obvious background in computing. For one versed in modern and medieval languages, her next move was equally inexplicable.

In 2003, she joined BT as a general manager, running a desk-based sales team, later – with no obvious qualifications for the post – becoming BT’s director of strategy and regulatory affairs. With even less evidence of any relevant qualification, on 1 April 2011 she was elevated to chief executive of BT’s Openreach division, overseeing the £2.5 billion rollout of fibre.

One consequence of the application of her well-honed management skills was BT being hit with the biggest Ofcom fine ever of £42 million, imposed because BT had misused the terms of its contracts to reduce compensation payments owed to other telecoms providers for failing to deliver Ethernet services on time.

This breach related entirely to the period January 2013 to December 2014 when Garfield was in charge but, by the time Ofcom had caught up with BT in March 2017, Garfield was long gone, having joined Seven Trent as CEO.

By June 2022, she had established herself as the highest-paid CEO in the industry, pocketing £3.9 million in pay and perks for the previous year, despite rising customer bills and a sewage dumping scandal.

The scandal arose under her management, her company having been fined £1.5 million the previous December for several incidents when raw sewage was dumped into Worcestershire watercourses, one incident alone having been responsible for the illegal discharge of 360,000 litres.

Thus did yet another of that gilded elite make her mark. As an overpaid member of the leader caste, who lacked any qualifications or operational experience for her exalted post, she joined Liz Barber in costing her employer a bundle in fines. At least Severn Trent could count itself fortunate in surviving Garfield’s ministrations with a fine somewhat less than the £42 million she had cost her previous employer.

That had not stopped her, however, from being appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for “services to the water industry”.

Then, keeping herself in line with the performance of her illustrious contemporaries was Susan Davy, boss of FTSE 250 group Pennon, which is the owner of South West Water (SWW). If possible, her firm had fared even worse under her leadership despite the fact she had been paid £1.6 million last year.

Pennon was marked down by the Environment Agency last year, being awarded one star out of five for environmental performance, the lowest possible rating.  The regulator had concluded that its performance had been “terrible across the board”, the company having failed the previous year to meet its pollution targets for the tenth year running, putting it into the lead for the largest number of pollution incidents caused.

Another of the monstruous regiment of women in the upper echelons of the water industry is Louise Beardmore, CEO of United Utilities, owner of North West Water. Recipient of a BSc in business administration, management and operation from the University of Salford, she is yet another holding a top post without relevant qualifications or operational experience.

Add Northumbrian Water chief Heidi Mottram, CEO of Northumbria Water, with her a BSc in geography at the University of Hull and a career in the rail industry, of the 12 major water providers in Britain, half are led by women.

The prominence of female bosses in the water industry stands in stark – and welcome – contrast to the rest of Britain’s top businesses, says the Mail in its article, apparently happy to see a failing industry in the hands of women who lack relevant qualifications and operational experience, not exactly setting the best of examples for women in high places.

But, in the sense that this monstruous regiment doesn’t seem to have performed significantly worse than its male counterparts, we at last seem to have achieved some form of equality between the sexes, even if it is only in the degree of incompetence.