The boss of the company, which left thousands of households in Kent and East Sussex without water for days, will receive a long-term bonus of £400,000 regardless of his performance if he resists calls for him to resign over water cuts.
David Hinton, chief executive of South East Water, is set to receive the bonus if he remains in his position until July 2030.
Hinton is facing calls to give up his right to a previously unreported “service award”. The payout, which was revealed in the company’s annual report, is not linked to performance, meaning that as long as Hinton stays, he will receive it whatever the company’s record on water supply or pollution.
South East Water has faced huge pressure after 30,000 households in Kent and East Sussex suffered days of interrupted water supplies in November and again in January.
On Wednesday, Environment Minister Emma Reynolds called on regulator Ofwat to review the company’s license to operate. Ofwat confirmed on Thursday that it had launched an investigation into whether South East Water had “complied with its commitment to provide high standards of customer service and support to its customers”.
The outage has forced many affected families in the Tunbridge Wells area to pick up bottled water from temporary distribution centers and travel outside the area to flush and use flushing toilets. The company said on Thursday that taps “should be flowing as normal” for about 2,000 people in Tonbridge and surrounding villages.
The crisis has thrust Hinton – who has run the company since 2020 – into the spotlight, with several MPs calling on him to… Resignation Or refuse his bonus for the current financial year. Hinton earned £457,000 in the year to June 2025, including a £115,000 bonus.
However, a 30% basic salary rise, to £400,000, plus two new payouts, means he is on track to get more than that this year – even if he doesn’t get any performance-linked bonus. He will receive £565,000 in fixed pay this financial year, if the service bonus is split equally over the five-year period.
The first payment is a ‘service bonus’, worth a further £400,000 if Hinton stays until July 2030 – an average of £80,000 a year. If he is still in the job, he will receive his first £80,000 in July 2028, the same amount the following July and a further £240,000 in July 2030.
In addition, South East Water awarded Hinton an additional £50,000, described as a “cash allowance”, to compensate him for additional working hours related to the appeal to the Competition and Markets Authority to allow bills to be raised to higher levels. The other water companies that filed the appeal did not appear to have been awarded additional fees for carrying out the appeal, which is often part of the standard process in five-year reviews.
Southeast Chief Financial Officer Andrew Farmer and other unnamed senior executives will be eligible for similar payments.
Mike Martin, the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells, said: “Dave Hinton’s salary and bonuses are enormous. He should be ashamed. Try giving us the water first, then let’s talk about the money.”
Martin added that all rewards should be linked to performance. The MP said: “It is clear that rewards must be linked to performance, otherwise they will be called a salary.”
Gary Carter, national officer at the GMB Federation, said: “Rewarding the person ultimately responsible for a customer’s failure – while at the same time increasing their bills – is simultaneously increasing their bills. If David Hinton had an ounce of decency, he would return that money.”
Last week, before the latest power outage, Hinton told MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that he did not want to focus on his bonus and salary during the previous water crisis in December. This is why he does not give media interviews about the water shortage, he said.
He was also not giving interviews as the latest crisis unfolded, but the company said he was “working as hard as everyone else behind the scenes.”
However, Hinton acknowledged that his performance-related bonus may be canceled this year as a result of the water shortage. “There are different elements to the reward, for example, health and safety is one element, and a whole load of elements on the water supply, and I don’t expect to get a reward on any of those,” he said.
Paddy Joffe, a researcher at the Center for High Pay, an activist group, said the additional payments appeared to be “a new form of compensation package.”
“Guaranteed service awards of this type are not common, and executives are typically rewarded through base pay and performance-linked incentives based on a range of metrics,” he said. Additional payments appear to “reward substandard performance and poor quality of service to customers, while also removing accountability for that,” Joffe added.
A spokesperson said: “South East Water remains committed to a compensation framework that supports a culture of performance, recognizes success but does not reward poor performance.
“The remuneration scheme is assessed by an independent remuneration committee chaired by a non-executive director of the company. Executive directors are not part of this committee and have no say in their remuneration.
“The bonus system consists of multiple elements, including health and safety factors, the environment program and employee engagement. We can confirm that no bonus has been paid for operational performance for the year 2024-2025.”