News story

Ofwat Chair appointment extended and Board members reappointed

Jonson Cox’s term as Chair of the Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat) extended until April 2022

Jonson Cox’s appointment as Chair of the Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat) has been extended by six months and two other Board members have been reappointed as non-executive directors.

Cox has served as Chair of Ofwat since November 2012. His appointment has now been extended until the end of April 2022. The recruitment campaign for his successor will be launched later this week.

Mark Bayley and Alison Munro were appointed non-executive directors in April 2016 and have been reappointed until 31 October 2025.

The appointments have been made in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments as regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The Code requires for appointees’ political activities (if significant) to be declared. The appointees have not declared any significant political activity in the past five years.

Biographies

Jonson Cox CBE

Jonson has been Chair of Ofwat since November 2012. He has played a strong part in the work to bring the water sector back to a core customer and public service focus, while retaining an attractive proposition for investors. He has a background as CEO and Chair in regulated and commercial infrastructure, with a focus on turnarounds and restructuring.

After an early career with Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Jonson served as Managing Director of Yorkshire Water (1996-2000) to lead the company out of a significant crisis with its customers and restore YW’s top-ranking status in the industry. After other infrastructure roles, he returned to the water sector for over six years from 2004 – 2010 as Group CEO at AWG plc. He led the successful turnarounds of underperforming Anglian Water Services, Morrison plc and Anglian Water International.

Jonson led the restructuring of UK Coal plc as Executive Chair from 2010 to 2012 to bring a managed ‘soft close’ to coalmining in the UK. He secured the value in UKC’s property development business for the miners’ pension funds and the PPF, leading the creation and listing of Harworth plc and serving as inaugural Chair from 2012 to 2018. He joined Cory Group, owner of the UK’s largest waste-to-energy plant, as Chair when lenders took control in 2015 and led the board though the recovery and successful sale to infrastructure funds in 2018. He serves on the global policy council of I Squared Capital and is a NED at Energia, the Irish energy group, and Ovo, the UK energy retailer.

Mark Bayley CBE

Mark was appointed as Non-Executive Director at Ofwat in April 2016. He is also a member of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee and Major Projects Committee.

Mark has spent much of his career in the delivery of large and complex projects at the interface between the private and public sectors. After an early career as an investment banker, Mark was Finance Director then Chief Executive of LCR, the developer of the High Speed 1 rail project and owner of the UK arm of Eurostar. After acting as the interim Commercial Director of HS2 for a year he was appointed as Chief Executive of the Green Deal Finance Company which he ran from 2012 to 2015. After selling the GDFC to private equity at the beginning of 2017 he completed an assignment as Executive Board Director and interim CFO at a new procurement agency within the MOD.

Mark is a non-executive director of Network Rail and chair of its Audit and Risk Committee, and is also a non-executive director of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. He is also chair of the board of trustees of Shadwell Opera.

Alison Munro CBE

Alison was appointed as Non-Executive Director at Ofwat in April 2016. She is also Chair of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee and a member of the Nominations Committee.

Alison is also Chair of Transport for London’s Independent Investment Programme Advisory Group.

Previously, Alison was the first Chief Executive of HS2 Ltd, and then Managing Director for phase two of HS2. Previously she was a Director at the Department for Transport, where she was responsible for strategic roads policy, including developing a major motorway investment programme and longer-term planning of national transport networks.

Published 11 October 2021