Boss of UK’s most polluting water firm made £1.4m from shares before retiring
The chief executive of the UK’s most polluting water company made £1.4m from the sale of shares in the business before his retirement, the Guardian can reveal.
Politicians have called for water companies to be taxed to the extent that they cannot pay huge sums to CEOs after it was revealed that Steve Mogford of United Utilities retired on 31 March and in the months beforehand sold his shares for just under £1.4m.
According to Environment Agency data, the most polluting water company in England last year was United Utilities. One of the company’s pipes spilled sewage into the River Ellen, near the Lake District, for nearly 7,000 hours last year.
The data also showed that 10 of the country’s 20 pipes that spilled the most sewage in 2022 were owned by United Utilities, which provides water to the north-west and Lake District.
The Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesperson, Tim Farron, said: “As the sewage scandal runs on, top chiefs at water companies are racking up millions of pounds in bonuses. This is a disgrace. Water companies shouldn’t be allowed to get away with pumping thousands of hours of filthy sewage into our rivers and waterways. We need the Conservatives to stop sitting on their hands, tax water companies and end this scandal.”
Megan Corton Scott, a political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: “We are the only country in the world to fully privatise our national water supply. This gave monopoly powers to the water companies with no conspicuous accountability and little commercial incentive to do anything but collect bill payments. People have no choice but to give them their money in exchange for performance that is, frankly, well below bog standard.
“The theory that the innate decency of the companies’ management
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