PREM SIKKA Top 50 women in accounting

Hardly a day passes without reports of English water companies dumping tons of raw sewage into rivers and seas. Such practices improve corporate profits and performance-related executive pay, but threatens human and marine life and biodiversity.

Water industry failures were summarised in a Ministerial statement in March 2018: “They have shielded themselves from scrutiny, hidden behind complex financial structures, avoided paying taxes, have rewarded the already well-off, kept charges higher than they needed to be and allowed leaks, pollution and other failures to persist for far too long.”

Nothing has changed. Puny fines have failed to curb anti-social practices. Since 2010, Thames Water has been sanctioned 89 times and paid fines of £163m. It continues to dump sewage. The government and ineffective regulators are complicit. For example, water companies have been given until 2050 to stop dumping sewage and reduce leaks to 50% of the 2017-18 levels.

In 1989, when water was privatised, the population of England was 47.7 million. Now it is around 56 million, but no new reservoirs have been built. There is no national grid to move supplies and dry spells are accompanied by warnings of droughts and restrictions of water usage.

There is an urgent need to curb anti-social practices. People need to be authorised to bring civil and criminal prosecutions of water companies and their directors. Customers must be empowered to vote on executive pay so that those engaging in anti-social practices are not rewarded.

Prem Sikka is Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex

The Women in Accounting Top 50, supported by Ignition, has been released. Out of the 12 women on the list from the UK, three were at the recent PQ magazine awards, and one of these was picking up the Personality of the Year! Rachel Harris (pictured), director, striveX Ltd, walked off with that coveted PQ award, and she attended the awards alongside ICB’s CEO Ami Copeland and Caroline Hobden from Accountex.

However, if we are talking women who are “powerful change makers and trailblazers who have inspired us with their resilience, leadership and mentoring in 2023” then you would not need to look much further than ACCA CEO Helen

Brand or AAT CEO Sarah Beale. Both are not on the list, yet they have been promoting diversity, inclusion and equality for many years. The current CIPFA Present Jayne Owen is another who would be on our list.

Anyway, winge over! Here’s the other incredible women who made the 2023 list from the UK: Becky Glover, FD VNC Automotive; Chengai Ruredz, FC, Open Energy Market; Chloe Britnell, senior manager, PJCO Chartered Certified Accountant; Eriona Bajrakurtaj, CEO, Majors Accounts and Co Ltd; Georgia Duffee, director, Benedetto Accounts & Tax; Lara Manton, director, LJM Bookkeeping Ltd; Nikki Adams, MD, Ad valorem Group; Palak Tewary, Associate Director, Price Mann; Sarah Ghosh, finance lead, UK Civil Service; and Sonia Dorais, CEPO Chaser.