The story of Paula Vennells and the destruction brought to the lives of hundreds of sub postmasters outlined earlier in Robber Baroness I, is bad enough. But an even more egregious example of promotion beyond competence which has wider fiscal impact and longer-lasting damage on both the environment and the public purse is the case of Sarah Bentley. 

Hers is a chapter in the tortuous saga of water privatisation in England. Many readers will be familiar with the difficulties of water companies in general, and of Thames Water in particular.  Background detail can be found on this site at “Can Water Stay Liquid”).

Sarah Bentley started well, graduating from the University of Kent with a first-class honours degree in Management Science and Computing. She then worked internationally in a number of roles, including strategy, marketing and propositions for BT’s Global Services division. After this, she became CEO of Datapoint, an Alchemy-backed company delivering customer relationship management (CRM) services throughout Europe,

Sarah then moved to become the managing partner for Accenture’s digital business unit in the UK and Ireland servicing a range of large UK consumer-facing businesses. She moved to join the Executive Committee at Severn Trent water company, where she was appointed as Chief Customer Officer in 2014, leading their Consumer Retail, Wholesale Network Operations Group.

This appears an excellent set of experiences as preparation to lead a customer-facing utility, with experience in a water company to boot. As a result, in 2020, Sarah was able to negotiate with Thames Water to be appointed as Chief Executive Officer. She secured this on her promise to forge an 8-year plan to rectify Thames’ fiscal, managerial and environmental failing after years of paying shareholders large dividends and sinking the company in debt for inadequate replacements for Victorian infrastructure.

What lured her from Severn Water was a very generous sign-on package. Just a year ago, she was handed a total of £727,000 in two one-off payments, part of a £3.1million ‘golden hello’ for signing on. This sum came on top of her eye-watering annual pay and bonuses the year before. It was announced within days of Thames being blasted by the Environment Agency for the firm’s pollution record. 

Then figures came to light that Thames had suffered its worst leaks since 2018—some 630 million litres—and hundreds of untreated sewage discharges. Given the resulting outrage, Bentley announced that she and Alastair Cochran, Chief Financial Officer would forgo any performance bonus that year. However, Ms Bentley’s actual compensation rose to £1.6m—larger than her £1.5m in the previous year.

“Ms Bentley’s plan to give up the bonus was “nothing more than a flimsy PR stun.”

—Gary Carter, GMB union

Despite such largesse, last summer, Ms Bentley resigned from Thames Water, giving no explanation. Not one-quarter-way into her 8-year plan, she left Thames Water mired in a £10.8 billion debt and suffering mounting prosecutions for increasing environmental damage from its crumbling infrastructure.

The pension fund owners, who made such a killing in Thames early years of privatusation, have stumped up £1.5 billion to try to make good the damage.

“The days of profit before the environment must end.”

—Chris Weston, CEO Thames Water, 27 June 2023

#1095—510 words