Former South West Water CEO Susan Davy received almost £1.1 million in remuneration, including a £270,000 bonus, for the 2024-25 financial year after a drinking water-borne parasitic illness outbreak which led to a major public health incident in Brixham.
The outbreak, which began on 14 May 2024, affected around 16,000 properties in the area, led to hundreds of recorded cases of illness and was not resolved for eight weeks – with as many as 1,000 people left ill over the summer according to residents.
Her remuneration for the following year, until her December 2025 departure from South West Water parent company Pennon Group, which is also the parent company of Bournemouth Water, Bristol Water and SES Water, amounted to £875,000 – also including a bonus.
The company’s annual report for 2025-26 – during which it reported underlying pre-tax profits of more than £135 million – shows that she received a total of £6.8 million in remuneration – including bonuses, benefits and pension payments – during her five years and five months as CEO.
While it says that Susan Davy’s bonus was “cancelled” for 2022-23 following the Brixham outbreak, it also says that the company has diverted an “equivalent value” for “future issuance under the company’s WaterShare+ scheme” – which it describes as “a unique scheme that rewards our customers when we outperform”.
Among her 2025-26 benefits package was a new “personal security-related allowance”, the “first tranche” of which was £50,000, following a risk assessment by the Pennon board which “determined that additional security measures were necessary”.
The report also says that she received a £735,000 payment in lieu of notice and continued to be entitled to, or receive payment in lieu of, other benefits including the £50,000 security allowance.
She also received a “contribution towards legal costs related to her departure and an allowance related to outplacement assistance” which was capped at £60,000.
On Monday, Helen Campbell, interim executive director of water regulator Ofwat, said that the water companies must explain their “remuneration decisions and the reasoning behind them”.
She added: “If water companies want to rebuild public trust, they need to demonstrate that clearly through their decisions.
“They must do much more to acknowledge the strength of feelings from customers on bonuses, make the case for why the remuneration is needed and fair, and explain how it will help to deliver the improved performance customers expect.”
Susan Davy. Photo: Pennon Group.
Last month, South West Water was fined £1.85 million at a hearing at Exeter Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to criminal offences relating to the contamination of drinking water in Brixham.
The court heard that the company has been convicted 22 times since June 2014, including supplying water unfit for human consumption in North Devon in 2018.
Another case brought by the Environment Agency, to which South West Water also pleaded guilty, was concluded at Plymouth Magistrates’ Court in the same month.
The charges in this case concerned hundreds of sewage spills and extended discharges at five sites across Devon and Cornwall between 2015 and 2021, with sentencing expected at the end of this month.
At the same time law firm Leigh Day has expanded legal action it is taking against South West Water and Pennon Group over sewage pollution in Exmouth, Budleigh Salterton and Lympstone to also include Dawlish, Sidmouth, Teignmouth, Newquay and Penzance.
During 2024, South West Water released sewage for more hours than any other water company in England and Wales.
One overflow, at Salcombe Regis, spilled sewage for very nearly the whole year (bar eleven hours) – the longest sewage release duration across all the waste water storm overflow sites in both countries.
During the 2024-25 reporting year it recorded 109 pollution incidents per 10,000km of sewer. That’s more than any other water company in England and Wales, five times the industry-wide target and more than double the industry average.
Two weeks before Susan Davy’s departure, Pennon Group published a press release saying it had been “named among the UK’s top environmental performers” after “achieving top scores” for “both climate action and water stewardship”.
Susan Davy said: “Being named on CDP’s A-List and strengthening our commitment to nature transparency shows that our plans are delivering real progress, not just promises.”
