A WEEK ago Thames Water was fined a massive £1m for allowing repeated discharges of pollution from its Tring Sewerage Treatment works into the Wendover Arm of the Grand Union Canal.
Canal & River Trust (CaRT), that is responsible for the Arm, have remained silent on the outcome of the prosecution. Why is this?
CaRT Trustee was a Thames Water chief
Investigation has revealed that one of CaRT's Trustees, Steve Shine, was Thames Water's Chief Operating Officer and a member of the its main Board for five years from 2007 to 2012. He left Thames Water in March 2012 and became a CaRT trustee a month later. The pollution is reported to have started three months after he joined and continued for a period of nine months.
Mr Shine still has strong connections to the polluter, Thames Water. He is now Chief Executive of Veolia Water UK which is part of an alliance carrying out billions of pounds of improvements to Thames Water's ageing water and sewerage networks over the next 10 years.
No doubt it's just plain embarrassment that has prevented CaRT from commenting.
Another causing embarrassment
Unfortunately, it is not just Steve Shine with business connections that cause the Trust embarrassment. Another Trustee, Manish Chande has a business interest that is benefiting from an £80m investment made by the Trust. Following this discovery, minutes of Board meetings have the following entry under declarations of interest:
‘Manish Chande is a founding member and Senior Partner at Clearbell Capital LLP. Under its discretionary mandate, Partners Capital (the Trust's fund manager) has allocated capital via pooled investments to CP Real Estate Holdings Limited, a property company advised by Clearbell. Partners Capital has also invested in CPBM Finance Limited (Project Monza) a joint venture, which includes a fund managed by Clearbell'.
Presumably, financial expert Mr Chande was invited to become a trustee so he could advise the Board on investment ...