Ms Vanda Murray OBE

Chair Yorkshire Water, Chair Kelda Holdings, Chair Kelda Eurobond

11th September 2025

Dear Ms Murray

Thank you for your reply of the 28th of August, where you set out the importance of rebuilding trust. As you will recognise the recent issues of Nicola Shaw’s pay further decreases trust, and the fact that it relied on a newspaper report and letter from our campaign group, MPs and Mayors to secure the right action from you demonstrates the cliff you will now have to climb.

You state your confidence in Nicola Shaw, and the complexity of the turnaround required, but she is now in her third year in post, and the metrics are only getting worse. You cite a 12% reduction on 240m litres per day by 2030 as real progress, but this is not when your drought permit is extracting more than that per day from our river. This is not a stretching target when the neglected infrastructure continues to crumble.  It seems that Nicola is being rewarded for the day job as well as another job with Kelda to secure more debt.

We do not agree that we are not paying. Shareholder debt incurs interest payments from our bills at double the base rate. ‘Financing’ costs are modelled onto PR24 and have doubled. Shareholders may well be paying but they are doing it with our money.

Ms Shaw may well be benchmarking at mid-range in the water sector but salaries in this sector are vastly inflated across the board. Note the NHS Chief Executive earns circa £270,0000 – that’s to run the whole of the NHS. You can’t get more complex than that.

We welcome more disclosure and that Yorkshire Water will now follow the standards of UK-listed companies. As captured customers of a monopoly system we would expect nothing less.

We do note your move to stakeholder engagement with the Board and welcome that opportunity. We will be following this up with an invitation in the near future to meet with the Wharfe community.

We would welcome further information on the planned measurable and performance related outcome targets for the next 5, 10 and 30 years.

Kind regards

Prof R Malby, Stephen Fairbourn, Di Lury, Isla Lury, Martin Robertshaw, Karen Shackleton, Owen Wells

Ilkley Clean River Campaign

Supported by Climate Action Ilkley