Harrogate and Knaresborough’s MP calls for Yorkshire Water chief to surrender her £371,000 bonus

Tom Gordon said the pay-off, which is part of a more than £1 million pay packet, sends out the wrong signals at a time when Ofwat, the water regulator, had decided to allow water companies to significantly increase bills over the next few years.

Yorkshire Water, for example, will be allowed to hike bills by 25% by 2030.

The major utility company says its record on the environment is improving and that the latest bonuses for executive directors have been cut to reflect the fact there is still more work to do do on that score.

But the Harrogate and Knaresborough Lib Dem MP points out that the sizable bonus is being handed out despite the continued dumping of sewage into the Nidd and many other parts of the region.

Mr Gordon, who defeated long-standing Tory Andrew Jones in the General Election earlier this month, argues Yorkshire Water’s longstanding failure to maintain and update its infrastructure has helped the sewage crisis to continue, and also created other crises, such as reduced water supply to many local residents in April following a burst water pipe.

Mr Gordon said: “That Yorkshire Water continues to dump sewage, fail to upgrade its infrastructure and hike bills over the next few years is bad enough.

"To further reward their chief executive as these failures continue is a disgrace.

“That is why I am calling for Yorkshire Waters’ CEO, Nicola Shaw, to hand back her bonus.

“It is clearly not deserved or earned.

“Yorkshire Water needs to get its act together and upgrade their infrastructure and stop sewage dumping, not give out eyewatering bonuses most of us couldn’t even dream of.

“Their environmental vandalism must end immediately.

“The Liberal Democrats have been clear that we need a proper water regulator with real teeth to stop this behaviour, and a ban on bonuses for polluters, as well as making water companies and their bosses criminally responsible for their actions.”

A spokesperson for Yorkshire Water said: “Bonuses are determined by our independent remuneration committee who take into account the robust and varied performance measures of our bonus scheme, including customer service and environmental measures, as well as considering the wider performance of the business in the round.

"The outcome against the performance measures was a 61.2% bonus of the maximum allowance.

"The committee has taken the extra step of reducing the bonuses for executive directors to 42.2% (a reduction of around a third) to take into account the company’s environmental performance not being where we want it to be.

"Over the past year we’ve been making great strides to improve our performance as a company and the hard work is starting to pay off.

"We’ve delivered our stretching target to reduce water leaking from our pipes, achieved a world class health and safety performance and are leading in the industry for our wastewater treatment works compliance."