The boss of United Utilities has seen her pay soar despite the water supplier to seven million households in north west England admitting it had missed some of its pollution targets.

Louise Beardmore pocketed £2.5million, up 79 per cent on the previous year, and including a bonus of £830,000.

Her annual bonus for the previous year was blocked by industry regulator Ofwat after thousands of fish were killed in one of the company’s reservoirs during a routine maintenance operation.

The incident, for which the company was fined £60,000, was graded as the most serious by Ofwat, triggering the bonus ban for that year.

United Utilities has also been attacked for illegally dumping millions of litres of raw sewage into Windermere, England’s largest freshwater lake.

The pay bonanza comes at a critical time for the water industry.

Andy Burnham has vowed to take the sector back into public control if he becomes Prime Minister amid widespread outrage about persistent sewage spills, leaks and soaring bills.

The new MP for Makerfield, which is in United Utilities’ catchment area, accused water companies of ‘profiteering’ and demanded United Utilities scrap its final dividend payment to shareholders in August worth £236million.

In its annual report published yesterday the company said it was ‘disappointed not to have met all of our pollution-related targets for the year’.

It wants to build a huge underground tank on Windermere to cut storm overflow spills as part of a £200million plan to improve the lake’s water quality. 

A United Utilities spokesperson said: 'We are committed to paying competitive, market-based remuneration to all our employees. 

'Lou has historically been paid below her predecessors, industry peers, and FTSE 100 benchmarks. 

'Her increased remuneration reflects the importance of retaining and rewarding our leadership team after a year of strong performance, including improvements in customer service, no Category 1 pollution incidents, a 23% reduction in storm overflows and our lowest ever levels of sewer flooding, whilst at the same time mobilising a plan to deliver over £13billion of infrastructure investment by 2030, supporting 30,000 jobs here in the North West. 

'Lou’s pay and bonuses are wholly funded by shareholders, with no impact on customer bills.'