South East Water boss in line for £400,000 bonus despite outages
The boss of the company that has left thousands of households in south-east England without water for days is in line for a £400,000 long-term bonus regardless of his performance, if he resists calls for him to resign over the outages.David Hinton, the chief executive of South East Water, is to receive the payout if he stays on until July 2030.Hinton is facing calls to give up his right to the previously unreported “service award”.The payment, which was disclosed in the company’s annual report, is not performance-related, meaning that as long as he remains, Hinton will receive it whatever the company’s record on water supplies or pollution.South East Water has faced immense pressure after 30,000 households in Kent and East and West Sussex endured days of water supply failures in November and again in January.
The environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, on Wednesday called on the regulator Ofwat to review the company’s licence to operate,On Thursday, Ofwat confirmed it had launched an investigation into whether South East Water had “complied with its obligation to provide high standards of customer service and support for its customers”,The outage has forced many of the affected households in the Tunbridge Wells area to pick up bottled water from makeshift distribution centres and travel out of the area to wash and use flushing toilets,On Thursday, the company said taps “should be flowing as normal” for 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 for him to resign or refuse his bonus for this financial year.
Hinton received £457,000 in the year to June 2025, including a £115,000 bonus,However, a 30% base salary increase, to £400,000, plus two new payments mean he is on track to receive more than that this year – even if he were to receive no performance-related bonus,He is in line for £565,000 in fixed pay this financial year if the service award is divided equally over the five-year period,A government source said that “if the company want to rebuild trust it could start by blocking bonuses for under-performance”,The first payment is a “service award”, worth another £400,000 if Hinton stays until July 2030 – a rate of £80,000 a year.
If he is still in the job he will receive the first £80,000 in July 2028, the same the following July and another £240,000 in July 2030.In addition, South East Water awarded Hinton £50,000 in extra pay, described as a “cash allowance”, to compensate him for extra hours related to an appeal to the Competition and Markets Authority to allow bills to be raise even higher.Other water companies that have appealed do not appear to have awarded extra pay for carrying out the appeal, which is often part of the standard process in the five-yearly reviews.Hinton would also be eligible for a performance-related long-term bonus of up to £600,000 over the five years.South East’s 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 wild.He should be ashamed.Try giving us water first, then let’s talk about the money.”Martin added that all bonuses should be performance-related.“Obviously, bonuses should be related to performance otherwise they would be called salary,” the MP said.
Gary Carter, a national officer at the GMB union, said: “It really adds insult to injury to reward the very person ultimately responsible for failing customers – whilst simultaneously increasing their bills.If David Hinton had a shred of decency, he would hand this money back.”Last week, before the latest outages, Hinton told MPs on the environment, food and rural affairs committee that he did not want a focus on his bonus and pay during an earlier water crisis in December.He said that was why he had not done media interviews about the water shortages.He has also not given interviews as the latest crisis has unfolded, but the company said he was “absolutely working as hard as everybody else behind the scenes”.
However, Hinton acknowledged that his performance-related bonus could be docked this year as a result of the water shortages.He said: “There are different elements to the bonus.For example, health and safety is one element, and a whole load of the elements are on water supply, and I do not expect to get a bonus on either of those elements.”Paddy Goffey, a researcher at the High Pay Centre campaign group said the extra payments appeared to be “a novel form of compensation package”.“Guaranteed service awards of this kind are not common, and executives are typically rewarded through base pay and performance-related incentives based on a range of metrics,” he said.
The extra payments appeared to be “rewarding substandard performance and a poor quality of service for customers, while also removing accountability for this”, Goffey added,A spokesperson for the company said: “South East Water remains committed to a remuneration framework that supports a performance culture, and recognises success but does not reward poor performance,“The bonus scheme is evaluated by the company’s independent non-executive director-led remuneration committee,The executive directors are not part of this committee and have no say in their remuneration,“The bonus scheme is made up of multiple elements, including health and safety factors, an environment programme, and staff engagement.
We can confirm that no bonus payment was made for operational performance for the year 2024-25.”
Mother of one of Elon Musk’s sons sues over Grok-generated explicit images
The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children is suing his company – alleging explicit images were generated of her by his Grok AI tool, including one in which she was underage.Ashley St Clair has filed a lawsuit with the supreme court of the state of New York against xAI, alleging that Grok, which is used on the social media platform X, promised to stop generating explicit images but continued to do so.She is seeking punitive and compensatory damages, claiming dozens of sexually explicit and degrading deepfake images were created by Grok.After two weeks of public outcry at the tool being used to create sexualised images of women and children, the company said on Wednesday it would “geoblock” the ability of users “to generate images of real people in bikinis, underwear, and similar attire via the Grok account and in Grok in X” in countries where it was illegal.St Clair, 27, who is estranged from Musk, is a rightwing influencer, author and political commentator
Grok AI: what do limits on tool mean for X, its users and UK media watchdog?
Elon Musk’s X has announced it will stop the Grok AI tool from allowing users to manipulate images of people to show them in revealing clothing such as bikinis.The furore over Grok, which is integrated with the X platform, has sparked a public and political backlash as well as a formal investigation by Ofcom, the UK’s communications watchdog.Here is a guide to what X’s announcement means for the social media platform, its users and Ofcom.The social media platform said on Wednesday it had implemented “technical measures” to stop the @Grok account on X from allowing the editing of images of real people so that they appear to be in revealing clothing such as bikinis. Before this, users had been able to ask @Grok to manipulate images, with the results being published on the platform
‘Not regulated’: launch of ChatGPT Health in Australia causes concern among experts
A 60-year-old man with no history of mental illness presented at a hospital emergency department insisting that his neighbour was poisoning him. Over the next 24 hours he had worsening hallucinations, and tried to escape the hospital.Doctors eventually discovered the man was on a daily diet of sodium bromide, an inorganic salt mainly used for industrial and laboratory purposes including cleaning and water treatment.He bought it over the internet after ChatGPT told him he could use it in place of table salt because he was worried about the health impacts of salt in his diet. Sodium bromide can accumulate in the body causing a condition called bromism, with symptoms including hallucinations, stupor and impaired coordination
Grok scandal highlights how AI industry is ‘too unconstrained’, tech pioneer says
The scandal over the flood of intimate images on Elon Musk’s X created non-consensually by its Grok AI tool has underlined how the artificial intelligence industry is “too unconstrained”, according to a pioneer of the technology.Yoshua Bengio, a computer scientist described as one of the modern “godfathers of AI”, said tech companies were building systems without appropriate technical and societal guardrails.Bengio spoke to the Guardian as he appointed the historian Yuval Noah Harari and the former Rolls-Royce chief executive Sir John Rose to the board of his AI safety lab.X has announced it is stopping Grok from manipulating pictures of real people to show them in revealing clothes such as bikinis, including for premium subscribers, after a public and political backlash.Asked what the furore showed about the state of the AI industry, Bengio said the situation across the sector was “not completely a free for all” but needed to be addressed
Musk’s X to block Grok AI tool from creating sexualised images of real people
The UK government has claimed “vindication” after Elon Musk’s X announced it had stopped its AI-powered Grok feature from editing pictures of real people to show them in revealing clothes such as bikinis, including for premium subscribers.After a fortnight of public outcry at the tool embedded into X being used to create sexualised images of women and children, the company said it would “geoblock” the ability of users “to generate images of real people in bikinis, underwear, and similar attire via the Grok account and in Grok in X”, in countries where it was illegal.It said it would do this in the UK in line with law changes ministers have pledged to introduce. X also said it had “zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content”. It did not specify whether people would still be able to create such images on the standalone Grok app
California attorney general investigates Musk’s Grok AI over lewd fake images
California authorities have announced an investigation into the output of Elon Musk’s Grok.The state’s top attorney said Grok, an AI tool and image generator made by Musk’s company xAI, appears to be making it easy to harass women and girls with deepfake images on X and elsewhere online.“The avalanche of reports detailing the non-consensual, sexually explicit material that xAI has produced and posted online in recent weeks is shocking,” California attorney general, Rob Bonta, said in a statement. “I urge xAI to take immediate action to ensure this goes no further.”Bonta’s office is investigating whether and how xAI violated state law
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