Cllr Mike Giles has written to Thames Water's chief executive asking him to face residents at a public Q&A before the end of 2026, citing 254 sewage discharges.
The Liberal Democrat candidate for Earley and Woodley has written to the chief executive of Thames Water asking him to sit in front of local residents and answer questions before the end of this year.
Cllr Mike Giles sent the letter to Chris Weston on Thursday 24 September and sent it to this site the same morning, saying he was putting it in the public domain. It asks three questions, on sewage discharges, on bills and on executive pay, and then makes an invitation: a public water Q&A with residents, held inside the constituency, before 31 December 2026.
“I am also formally inviting you, or a senior representative empowered to answer on your behalf, to join me for a public water Q&A with residents,” the letter says. “This should be held within the Earley and Woodley constituency, which is conveniently just minutes from the Thames Water HQ, before the end of 2026. Please can you confirm your acceptance?”
That last point is not rhetorical. Thames Water’s head office is Clearwater Court in Reading, the building behind Mr Giles in the photograph above, and his release describes it as “just minutes away from the Earley and Woodley constituency”.
You can read the letter in full: Cllr Mike Giles’s letter to Thames Water, 24 September 2026 (PDF).
The three questions
The letter does not simply complain. Each section ends with something Mr Weston can answer yes or no to, or put a number against.
On sewage, it asks: “Will you commit to promptly publishing real-time discharge data for every outfall on the Thames and Loddon within the Earley and Woodley constituency?”
On bills, it asks what proportion of the increase residents are being charged “is funding new infrastructure, rather than servicing debt”.
On pay, it asks how the company justifies its payments to senior staff “against the company’s record on sewage and bills”.
Mr Giles adds that he wants “a direct answer to each question, which I will also share with residents”.
The figures he is quoting
The numbers in the letter are attributed to Environment Agency monitoring data and to Thames Water’s own annual report. We have not independently checked them against those sources, so they are set out here as the letter states them.
For 2025, the letter says Thames Water discharged sewage into the River Thames 254 times, for a total of 1,413 hours. The River Loddon, which runs through Winnersh, Sindlesham, Twyford and Charvil before joining the Thames, saw 52 discharges totalling 517 hours.
On bills, the letter says the average has risen from £436 to a projected £588 a year by 2030, and describes that as a 36 per cent rise. Those two figures actually work out at about 35 per cent, which is the only point in the letter where its own arithmetic does not quite match its wording. Either way it is about £150 a year more on a typical bill.
On pay, the press release says more than £4 million went to senior executives and board members in the year to 31 March 2025. The letter carries a second figure the release leaves out: “a further £18.5 million in retention payments made to 21 senior managers”. That works out at an average of about £880,000 each, though the letter does not say how the money was split.
What the candidate says
Mr Giles said: “Residents are paying Thames Water more and more for a service that keeps getting worse, while sewage pours into our local rivers and executives receive massive bonuses.”
He added: “I’ve invited the Thames Water CEO to join me at a public Q&A in Earley and Woodley before the end of the year. It’s time Thames Water faced the music, residents deserve straight answers on this fiasco.”
His release goes further than the letter does on what his party wants done. It says that because of what it calls the company’s chronic failings, the Liberal Democrats “would like to see the water company brought into public ownership, with shareholders and debtors bearing the financial consequences”. The letter itself makes no such demand, and asks only for answers and a meeting.
Mr Giles was selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Earley and Woodley on 18 September, six days before this letter. He is not a Wokingham borough councillor: he sits on South Oxfordshire District Council for the Sonning Common ward, which is how he signs the letter.
We have not seen any reply from Thames Water, and none would be expected on the day the letter was sent. We have not approached the company or any other party for comment on this letter, and we would publish a response from either on the same terms.
What it means for you
Nothing is booked. There is no date, no venue and no acceptance: at this stage there is a letter and an invitation, and whether a public meeting happens in Earley or Woodley depends entirely on whether Thames Water says yes.
What you can do now is check the same records the letter draws on, rather than waiting for either side to characterise them. Thames Water publishes a live storm discharge map showing where overflows are operating and where they have operated recently, which is the thing the letter is asking to be extended to every outfall on the Thames and the Loddon. Bills, and the rises allowed up to 2030, are set by the regulator Ofwat, which publishes its final determinations for 2025 to 2030 company by company. Complaints that a water company will not resolve go to the Consumer Council for Water, which is free to use.
If you live by the Loddon or the Emm Brook, the practical local page is our Wokingham roadworks and travel page when water works close a road, and the Environment Agency’s flood warning service when the river is high rather than when it is dirty.
Sources: letter from Cllr Mike Giles to Chris Weston, chief executive of Thames Water, dated 24 September 2026, and the accompanying press release, both sent to this site by Cllr Giles on 24 September 2026. The discharge, bill and pay figures are as quoted in that letter, which attributes them to Environment Agency monitoring data and to Thames Water’s annual report.
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