Ian Livingston, BT's chief executive, is to receive a £343,000 bonus, despite failing to meet any financial targets.

The telecoms group, which recently announced plans to shed 15,000 jobs after huge losses in its IT unit, said that the award was based on "non-financial" elements, including improved customer service and "environmental and social measures".

The payout, revealed in the company's annual report, follows a formula for bonus payments that was laid out last year. Under this, 30 per cent of executive bonus payments in the group are linked to customer service and 10 per cent to "each director's contribution to the company's environmental, social and governance objectives".

However, the move is bound to anger unions and workers who have been shed by the group.

Earlier this month BT reported a pre-tax loss of £134 million for the year to March 31, compared with pre-tax profits in the previous year of £1.97 billion. That was largely because of losses of £2.04 billion in BT Global Services, which provides IT and telecom services to companies.

Defending the payment, BT said that, during the year, it had seen a 20 per cent reduction in network faults, leading to 1 million fewer engineer visits. Customer complaints have decreased by 30 per cent and abandoned calls by three quarters, it said.

Mr Livingston is to convert his reward into shares, the company said, and will receive no pay rise this year.

Hanif Lalani, the new head of the group's global services unit, asked not to be considered for a bonus, according to the annual report.

It also reveals that Ben Verwaayen, the company's former chief executive, and the man blamed by some critics for the mess in global services, received a termination payment of £700,000 and a bonus of £300,000 when he stood down last year.

Times Recommends

• ‘Lame duck’ fear for FSA as chief quits
• Storm over bailout of EU's most ailing economy
• Northern Rock to drop 100% savings guarantee