The eye-watering six figure salary of the head of Welsh Water has been criticised after a year in which water bills rose to become among the highest in the UK, raw sewage was dumped in rivers and seas and large areas of Wales were subject to hosepipe bans.
Peter Perry, the chief executive of Welsh Water (DCWW), earned £332,000 in 2022 and that was before a generous pension contribution and bonus payments were added on. On top of his basic salary, he also earned a total of £232,000 in short and long term bonus despite the fact the not-for-profit company was heavily criticised over the amount of sewage discharged into rivers and the seas around onto Welsh Blue Flag beaches.
Last year, the company admitted its performance on sewage discharges wasn't "where we want to be" after a Senedd committee said the public was "rightly outraged by what it is witnessing".
Read more: Wales' public sector rich list 2023: The best paid officials in the nation
Welsh Water will increase customer bills by £14 from next month bringing the average bill for a household to £499 a year and making it the second highest in Wales and England. Welsh Water blamed the significant increase in the rate of inflation for the price hikes despite saying the company had "absorbed as much of these costs as possible".
Including payments into his pension package, Mr Perry's total remuneration package came to £675,000 last year and surpassed all those we recently named in the Wales' public sector rich list 2023, which ranked the best paid officials in the nation. Welsh Water is a 'company limited by guarantee' rather than being a formally-owned public body.
Ordinary working people expressed anger at the whopping bonus and questioned how such a reward could be paid at a time when the company is seemingly performing so badly.
Izzy Ross, the campaigns manager for Surfers Against Sewage, said Mr Perry's salary was "shocking but unsurprising". She added: "Peter Perry is profiting from pollution unashamedly. Welsh Water can’t justify these enormous pay packets whilst continuing such poor performance. Instead of lining their CEO’s pockets, Welsh Water should be investing in infrastructure to protect the environment, not continuing to spew sewage into treasured Welsh waterways."
The 2022 summer drought and hosepipe ban was particularly galling for people like Pembrokeshire gardener Wendy Kinver given that Wales loses 170 million litres of water every day. Welsh Water promised customers in the summer that it had increased the detection and repair of leaks to help conserve water. But it led some to criticise the water company for not doing more to manage water before the drought hit and not just when resources were under pressure.
Ms Kinver she and her husband lost a lot of plants due to the dry, hot weather last summer. Her three-and-a-half acre garden in Pont Trecynny, near Fishguard, was one of 10 shortlisted for the Daily Mail's Garden of the Year competition in 2019. The hosepipe ban meant her garden suffered badly and she questioned why DCWW hadn't managed to store the water sufficiently.
She said: "What has he actually achieved to warrant such a high bonus? I am so impressed that Wales has a non profit water provider, unlike many utility providers that are run by foreign countries. We have a constant supply of water in most parts of Wales, there should never be water shortages.
"Maybe his bonus could be put to a better use of providing an improved system. Also we are living in the 21st Century, we know what the pitfalls of living are by now and allowing contamination into our rivers is abhorrent. Surely the managers of Welsh Water are intelligent people so why is this still happening?"
The DCWW infrastructure is undeniably dated and the Victorian-era network includes combined sewer overflows which allow sewage to be dumped into rivers and seas when it's overwhelmed. The result is that Wales has some of the worst places for raw sewage being dumped into rivers and seas in the UK.
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The latest data for 2021 showed Welsh Water dumped sewage onto Welsh Blue Flag beaches 579 times, lasting an astonishing 6,757 hours. Welsh constituencies hold the top three places in England and Wales for the overall highest number of sewage dumps, and five out of the top ten. Preseli Pembrokeshire ranks as the constituency with the highest number of sewage dumps in the whole of England and Wales, with 6,754 dumps in 2021 (79,501 hours).
Mr Perry was appointed chief executive officer of Welsh Water in April 2020. He was the managing director of Welsh Water from October 2017 after four years as chief operating officer.
In Wales, the majority of customers are supplied by Welsh Water. In Wrexham, Denbighshire and Flintshire, water is supplied by Hafren Dyfrdwy, a company set up by Severn Trent Water.
Severn Trent plc is a private company serving more than eight million customers and is headed up by Liv Garfield. Her base salary for 2021/22 was £754,500. On top of that she was awarded benefits of £16,500 (including a green travel allowance of £15,000 p.a., family level private medical insurance, life assurance worth six times salary and participation in an incapacity benefits scheme), pension contributions of £138,100 and an annual bonus of £737,600 paid half in cash and half in shares.
Her reported total remuneration package is £3,913,400. Her company also loses water every day: approximately 14 million litres - enough to fill 74 Olympic sized swimming pools - every day.
Welsh Water said that as a not-for-profit company its main focus was on "delivering a good service to our customers and supporting the communities we serve". A spokesman for the company defended the executive pay and said: "Our executive remuneration is decided by the company’s remuneration committee which comprises only independent non-executive directors who are advised by independent consultants.
"The executive remuneration policy is subject to approval by our independent Glas members and the annual directors’ remuneration report is also subject to an advisory vote by the company’s members. Executive remuneration is variable and dependent on performance. The most recent environmental performance assessment placed us as one of the best performing companies in the sector and in the most recent CCW Water Matters Report, we were the highest scoring company for satisfaction with the overall experience of water/sewage provider – scoring 91%.”
The Welsh Government declined to comment.
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