Six UK water companies were banned Friday from paying bonuses to senior executives, which the government said would be inappropriate given their failure to clean up their massive sewage discharges.

The new measures, whose targets include the country's biggest supplier, financially troubled Thames Water, prohibit the companies from paying bonuses "to water bosses that oversee poor environmental and customer outcomes", the government announced in a statement.

Suffering from underinvestment in a sewer system that dates largely back to the Victorian era, UK water companies, privatised since 1989, have been under fire for several years due to the discharge of significant quantities of sewage into rivers and the sea.

Despite this, "water companies have awarded over £112 million ($152 million)

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