We’re used to hearing about bosses of English Water companies getting rewarded for failure, but north of the border, things are just as bad, if not worse. It’s particularly egregious to see publicly owned Scottish Water pay out £250,000 in bonuses to senior management when the company’s record is far from unblemished.
Scottish Lib Dem Leader Alex Cole-Hamilton and Emvironment spokesperson Sanne Dijkstra-Downie have written to John Swinney to ask him how such bonuses could be justified. They said:
Dear John,
We are writing to you following the publication of Scottish Water’s annual report, which included the executive members’ renumeration for 2026.
The report shows that executive members have received more than £250,000 in bonuses over the past year. It comes at a time when billions of litres of sewage are being discharged into Scotland’s rivers, lochs and beaches every year. New research has also suggested that almost all raw sewage spills in Scotland could be illegal.
Meanwhile, ongoing pollution incidents at Portobello Beach, a designated bathing water, have led to the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) advising the public against entering the water. Indeed, analysis has found that Portobello Beach recorded E.coli levels ten times above the safe limit. Wardie Bay, a popular wild swimming spot in the north of the city, has also experienced problems with water pollution, with a sewage pollution alert issued this month.
The continued water-quality issues at Kinghorn Beach means that the site faces being stripped of its designated bathing water status if it receives a fifth successive “poor” SEPA rating. The watchdog said that the water could be a risk to human and animal health.
As you will be aware, the bonuses paid to Scottish Water are only to be payable if the organisation meets its performance targets, which includes measures like customer satisfaction and a reduction in incidents. It is extremely difficult, therefore, to understand why such high bonuses continue to be paid when sewage discharges are consistently high and popular beaches are being forced to close.
Indeed, these bonuses will simply seem unjustifiable, especially for the many people who have been directly impacted by sewage problems and pollution at some of the country’s most beloved bathing spots. It is not at all clear how Scottish Water, a public body, is being properly held to account when these bonuses persist despite consistently disappointing performance.
Will you, therefore, explain why such high bonuses continue to be paid out and what, if any, consideration is given to significant factors like sewage dumps and beach closures in the decision to pay them?
We look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely,
Alex Cole-Hamilton
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and MSP for Edinburgh North Western
Sanne Dijkstra-Downie
Scottish Liberal Democrat environment spokesperson and MSP for Edinburgh Northern
I suspect we may have seen the subject of Alex’s first First Minister’s Question of the new session next week.
Christine Jardine MP used a recent Scotsman column to criticise the bonuses too:
We need investment in our sewage plants, drainage systems and in keeping our bills down. The Liberal Democrats at Holyrood have proposed a Clean Water Act that would bring our sewage network into the 21st century, while also tracking down and reporting every sewage dump, and replace outdated standards with modern enforceable regulation.
Something the Scottish Government has long promised to do and failed. It had originally committed to updating broken guidance from the 1990s, but earlier this year emails obtained under FOI showed that the Scottish Government and SEPA were no longer looking at updating the 1998 rules.
In my constituency we regularly hear from constituents concerned about burst mains, smelly sewage works and polluted rivers. For them it is little consolation that Scottish Water is still in public hands or, in the oft repeated slogan of the Scottish Government: “Not as bad as England”.
That is not good enough.
That Scottish Water is still in public hands and not been sold off for profit is to be welcomed.
But surely it should also mean that our Government is able to do more to ensure its efficacy.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
The foxes who visited London Zoo with deadly intent
9 tips for speaking at a Liberal Democrat conference
Is Reform UK self-destructing in Wales?
Tim
George Thomas
Chloe
Jana
Mohammed Amin
6 Comments
The campaign group We Own It has long campaigned for the water companies in England to be nationalised. This is because the Thatcher-era profit maximisation model gives powerful incentives to misbehave (sewage, director bonuses etc.) and that state ownership would make them properly accountable.
But, in Scotland there is a NATIONALISED water company which behaves just like the ones in England. Please someone explain.
“Scottish Water generally achieves higher customer satisfaction scores and lower average houshold bills than private water companies in England” [AI Overview]
https://www.google.com/search?q=hown+do+english+and+scottish+water+companies+compare+for+performance%3F&sca_esv=27dd3976f049fa4a&ei=do-Raui9PL6XhbIP8Neo2Q0&biw=1268&bih=788&ved=2ahUKEwjo0OWaucOWAxW-S0EAHfArKtsQ4dUDegQIBhAM&uact=5&oq=hown+do+english+and+scottish+water+companies+compare+for+performance%3F&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiRWhvd24gZG8gZ
Scottish bills are around £490 p.a.: English bills c. £600
Christopher Burden 27th Aug ’26 – 10:06am:
But, in Scotland there is a NATIONALISED water company which behaves just like the ones in England. Please someone explain.
Being nationalised doesn’t stop it raining — the proximate cause of almost all sewage discharges…
‘The sewage system explained’:
https://archive.is/MoPJV
The root cause is that our old sewerage systems combine rainwater and waste water in the same pipe; a design choice shaped by the Victorian’s belief in miasma theory…
https://www.libdemvoice.org/the-independent-view-are-mutuals-the-answer-to-the-water-crisis-80213.html#comment-616370
Scottish Water’s largest fine for major pollution was £52,298. Most incidents just get a civil penalty of £6,000 to £20,000; being state owned, the government fines itself. Privatised companies in England are more stringently regulated with far larger penalties such as Southern Water’s £90 million fine.
Scotland has over 4,080 Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) of which only half are fitted with an Event Duration Monitor (EDM) to track the frequency and duration of sewage discharges – hence the incomplete data. England and Wales has over 16,500 CSOs all of which are now fitted with an EDM.
Scottish Water invests around £1 billion a year in improvements with £100 million for sewage discharge reduction. South of the border, annual investment is £20.8 billion (40% of all water investment in Europe) – hence the higher bills — with £2.4 billion allocated for discharge reduction: 24 times more for a population around 10 times larger.
Christopher Burden 27th Aug ’26 – 10:06am:
The campaign group We Own It has long campaigned for the water companies in England to be nationalised.
Already tried and failed. Public ownership resulted in decades of chronic underinvestment as water quality improvements competed with more popular priorities such as schools, hospitals, roads, defence, etc. for limited budget funds. Discharges of untreated sewage were kept ‘out of sight, out of mind’ by a culture of cover-up and prevarication as described in this BBC article…
‘One family’s ‘good beach’ legacy’ [2009]:
https://archive.is/VfLz6
Christopher Burden 27th Aug ’26 – 10:06am:
This is because the Thatcher-era profit maximisation model gives powerful incentives to misbehave (sewage, director bonuses etc.)…
If that’s what We Own It claim then they are uninformed. Water company profits are highly regulated to incentivise efficiency and innovation while keeping prices down and investment up.
How are English water company profits regulated?:
https://gemini.google.com
Since privatisation, investment has increased over five-fold in real terms resulting in huge improvements. In 1990 only 28% of England’s bathing waters were rated ‘Good or ‘Excellent’ compared with 87% today, to higher standards…
’87% of bathing waters rated ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’ as new reforms come into law’ [November 2025]:
https://archive.is/HjkEC
@ Jeff The nationalised water body in Scotland – unlike the privatised bodies ‘Down South’ – does not pay out billions in dividends to shareholders. It reinvests into the infrastructure instead.