The Great Water Reset: What Five New CEOs in Twelve Months Tells Us About Leadership in UK Water

The UK water sector has quietly replaced a remarkable share of its most senior leadership in the space of a year. Five water companies have appointed new chief executives in roughly twelve months: Severn Trent, Pennon Group, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, Affinity Water and South East Water. At the same time, Thames Water is navigating a creditor takeover, Anglian Water has just appointed a new Chair, and the regulatory framework itself is being redesigned following the Independent Water Commission. For contractors, consultancies and anyone whose business depends on the water sector, this is not a personnel footnote. It is a structural event, and it deserves more attention than it is getting.

I spent part of this week mapping the leadership of every UK water company. It is the kind of exercise that sounds dry until you lay the names side by side and realise how much of the sector's decision-making power has changed hands, and how recently.

What has actually changed at the top of the UK water sector?

Here is the picture as it stands in July 2026.

Severn Trent appointed James Jesic as Chief Executive on 1 January 2026, succeeding Liv Garfield. Jesic joined the business as a graduate in 2003 and rose through operational and capital delivery roles before taking the top job. A genuinely home-grown appointment, and we will come back to why that matters.

Pennon Group, owner of South West Water, brought in Keith Haslett as Group Chief Executive in 2026. Haslett arrived from Affinity Water, where he had been CEO since January 2023, and previously held senior roles at Northumbrian Water and United Utilities.

Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water appointed Roch Cheroux, who joined in October 2025 and formally took the Chief Executive role in January 2026, succeeding Pete Perry after his retirement. Cheroux ran Sydney Water, Australia's largest water utility, and before that South Australia Water, with earlier career chapters at SUEZ, United Utilities and Bouygues.

Affinity Water, needing to replace Haslett, appointed Mark Garth, announced in January 2026. Garth came from United Utilities, where he led wastewater operations and environmental delivery, having started his career at Severn Trent.

South East Water appointed John Halsall, who started as Chief Executive on 23 July 2026. Halsall was previously Chief Operating Officer at Pennon Group, spent seventeen years at Thames Water in engineering, asset management and capital delivery, and held senior infrastructure roles at Network Rail.

Around those five appointments sits further movement. Anglian Water, led since 2024 by Mark Thurston, the former Chief Executive of HS2, appointed Sir Ian Cheshire as its new Chair with effect from July 2026. Thames Water remains under Chris Weston, but the company is in the hands of its creditors and has publicly warned about its cash position. This is not stability with a few exceptions. This is a sector resetting its leadership while carrying the largest workload in its history.

Why is water company leadership churning now?

Three forces are converging, and each one on its own would be enough to unsettle a boardroom.

The first is money. AMP8, the 2025 to 2030 investment period confirmed by Ofwat's PR24 final determinations, commits the sector to a capital programme in the region of £100 billion. It is the largest investment cycle the industry has ever attempted, and it demands delivery capability at a scale most water companies have never had to build. When the size of the job changes, boards ask whether the leadership matches the job. Several have clearly answered no.

The second is regulation. The Independent Water Commission, chaired by Sir Jon Cunliffe, reported in 2025 and recommended sweeping reform of how the sector is overseen, including replacing Ofwat with a new integrated regulator. Whatever the final shape of that reform, every water company board now knows the rules of the game are being rewritten mid-match. New rules tend to bring new referees, and new referees tend to prompt new captains.

The third is trust. Hosepipe bans, pollution incidents, penalty notices and public anger over bills have made water company leadership one of the most scrutinised jobs in British business. Look at the language around John Halsall's arrival at South East Water: rebuilding trust, resetting delivery, responding to customers. That is not the language of a routine succession. It is the language of a turnaround, and turnarounds need different leaders from stewardship eras.

Ask yourself which other UK sector is simultaneously doubling its capital programme, replacing its regulator and rebuilding public trust. There isn't one. The leadership churn is not noise. It is the logical consequence of the sector's situation.

Where are the new water sector leaders coming from?

This is where it gets interesting for anyone who thinks about executive talent for a living, and it should interest boards well beyond water.

Look at the movement again. Haslett went from Affinity to Pennon. Halsall went from Pennon to South East Water. Garth went from United Utilities to Affinity. The sector is, to a striking degree, recycling its own senior leadership. Three of the five new chief executives came directly from other UK water companies.

What does that tell us? Two things, and they pull in opposite directions.

It tells us that water is a genuinely specialist domain. Regulated utilities, price reviews, environmental performance, asset health, Ofwat relationships: these are not skills you pick up in a year, and boards evidently believe the safest hands are hands that have already held the same levers elsewhere.

But it also tells us the talent pool at the very top is shallow. When five companies fish in the same small pond within twelve months, every appointment creates a vacancy somewhere else. Haslett's move to Pennon forced Affinity into the market. That is a chain reaction, not a talent strategy, and chain reactions have a habit of leaving the last company in the sequence with the thinnest choice.

The two exceptions prove the point. Severn Trent did not need the merry-go-round because it had spent more than two decades growing its own successor. James Jesic joined as a graduate in 2003 and was developed through the operational and capital roles that now define the job. Welsh Water went the other way entirely and imported Roch Cheroux from Australia, reaching outside the UK pool altogether. One company built its answer. One company bought it from another hemisphere. Everyone else traded with the neighbours.

What does the Severn Trent appointment tell us about succession planning?

If I could put one observation in front of every board in the infrastructure economy, it would be this one.

The most stable leadership transition in the sector this year was the one that took twenty-three years to prepare. Severn Trent's succession was not an event. It was the visible end of a very long process: graduate intake, operational exposure, capital programme leadership, executive responsibility, then the chair. By the time the announcement came, the market barely blinked.

Compare that with the alternative. External chief executive searches at this level are expensive, slow, and carry real integration risk. The incoming leader spends a year learning the asset base, the regulator relationship and the culture before they can act with confidence. In a five-year investment period, a year is twenty per cent of the programme.

So here is the uncomfortable question for boards, and not just in water. If your chief executive resigned tomorrow, is your answer a name or a search? Because the companies that can answer with a name have been working on that answer for a decade or more. Succession is not a document you write when the Chair asks for it. It is a pipeline you fund when nobody is asking.

What does leadership change mean for contractors and consultants serving the water sector?

Now the commercial part, because this is where the churn stops being an industry curiosity and starts affecting order books.

The largest capital programme in the sector's history is being delivered by leadership teams who, in several cases, were not in the chair when the plans were written. Frameworks were let, alliances were formed and delivery models were chosen under predecessors. The people now accountable for those choices did not make them.

New leaders review everything. It is one of the few universal laws of executive behaviour. Delivery models get re-examined. Supply chain relationships get reassessed. The framework you fought hard to win two years ago is only as secure as the new chief executive's confidence in it, and that confidence has to be earned again from scratch.

There is a positive version of this too. Reviews create openings. A contractor or consultancy that was locked out of a client under the previous regime has a genuine second chance when the leadership changes. Incumbency is worth less during a reset, and challengers should recognise that window for what it is.

Either way, the practical implication is the same. Relationship maps built in 2024 are out of date. The firms that win the next five years in water will not be the ones with the best bid libraries. They will be the ones who rebuilt relationships at the top while their competitors assumed the old ones still held. If your key client contact changed in the last year, the most valuable business development activity available to you is a conversation with their replacement, and the second most valuable is finding out who advises them.

What should boards and leadership teams take from all this?

Three closing thoughts, offered from the vantage point of someone who spends every working day in the space between companies and senior people.

First, capability is the constraint on AMP8, not capital. The money is committed. The question is whether the sector can find, develop and retain the executives, directors and programme leaders to deploy it. Leadership churn at the top usually cascades: new chief executives reshape their teams, and those moves ripple through commercial, operational and capital delivery roles for two or three years afterwards. Expect the senior market in water to stay hot well beyond the corner office.

Second, the internal-versus-external question deserves more honesty than it usually gets. The sector's revealed preference is external hires from within the industry, but the smoothest transition of the year was internal and the boldest was international. Boards should ask whether their shortlists are genuinely the best available people or simply the most familiar ones.

Third, if you serve this sector rather than lead it, treat the reset as a clock that has already started. Every new chief executive arrives with a first hundred days, a review agenda and an appetite for fresh thinking. That window does not stay open long.

The water sector will spend the rest of this decade under more scrutiny, with more money and less certainty than at any point since privatisation. The people question sits underneath all of it. Watch the appointments. They tell you where the sector is going before the strategies do.

Frequently asked questions

Which UK water companies appointed new CEOs in 2025 and 2026? Severn Trent (James Jesic, January 2026), Pennon Group (Keith Haslett, 2026), Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water (Roch Cheroux, formally January 2026), Affinity Water (Mark Garth, announced January 2026) and South East Water (John Halsall, July 2026). Anglian Water also appointed a new Chair, Sir Ian Cheshire, in July 2026.

Why are so many water company chief executives changing now? Three pressures are converging: the scale of the AMP8 investment programme confirmed at PR24, regulatory reform following the Independent Water Commission's recommendations, and the need to rebuild public trust after sustained criticism of the sector's performance.

What is AMP8? AMP8 is the eighth Asset Management Period, the regulatory investment cycle running from 2025 to 2030, under which UK water companies are delivering a capital programme in the region of £100 billion set through Ofwat's PR24 price review.

How does leadership change affect water sector supply chains? New chief executives typically review delivery models, frameworks and supply chain relationships inherited from their predecessors. For contractors and consultancies this creates both risk to incumbent positions and opportunity for challengers, and it makes early engagement with new leadership teams commercially important.

Scott Lechley is the founder of Lechley Associates, a retained executive search firm specialising in senior commercial and operational appointments across UK construction, infrastructure and major programmes. lechley.com