BEN VERWAAYEN, the chief executive of BT, will receive £750,000 towards the costs of running his home in Surrey, the telecoms giant’s annual report revealed yesterday.

The payment, described as a “housing allowance”, is worth £250,000 a year for three years. It comes on top of a £200,000 relocation package the Dutchman received when he moved from New Jersey to take up his job in 2002.

The allowance was part of Mr Verwaayen’s £2.2 million pay package, his first full year’s income at BT. The company said the payments were “appropriate for a successful international business manager”.

The group added: “It’s what you do to recruit top people.”

Mr Verwaayen, 51, joined from Lucent Technologies, the US telecoms equipment maker, where he was vice-chairman. He will receive the allowance until January 2005, three years after joining BT.

Mr Verwaayen is free to spend the money as he wishes. It could even be used to help to finance a mortgage on his home in Haslemere, Surrey.

Ian Livingston, BT’s finance director, was paid a special bonus of £190,000 when he joined last year. The sum was to compensate him for missing out on a similar bonus from his previous employer, Dixons, the electrical goods retailer.

The controversy over Mr Verwaayen’s payment came as Kingfisher’s award of a £335,000 relocation package to Helen Weir, the finance director, refused to die down yesterday. Private investors at the retailer’s annual general meeting criticised the payment as “totally inappropriate”.