Dozens of council chiefs in the Black Country and Staffordshire are being paid six-figure salaries, according to figures published today.
The big earners are chief executives, all of whom are receiving more than £100,000 and many of them with packages which take their pay above that of cabinet ministers.
The survey, by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, also shows that many councils have five or more lesser executives also on six-figure salaries.
Top earner in the West Midlands in the 2005-06 list was Lin Homer, former chief executive of Birmingham City Council, who was paid £182,394, and the biggest local authority in England and Wales had seven executives in 2006-07 on £100,000-plus.
Walsall’s former chief executive Annie Sheppard was paid £174,500 in 2005-06, and her successor as interim chief executive Dave Martin earned £154,000 last year.
Dudley Council’s chief executive Andrew Spark earned £166,104 last year – a rise of 5.2 per cent.
Sandwell Council’s chief executive, Allison Fraser, was paid £139,641.
Wolverhampton City Council’s chief executive Richard Carr earned more than £120,000 a year in basic salary. Staffordshire County Council’s chief executive Nigel Pursey earned £176,033 last year; Cannock Chase’s chief executive, Stephen Brown, earned £110,073 and Stafford’s chief executive, David Rawlings, received £109,844. South Staffordshire District Council’s chief, Rolf Levesley, received £100,769.
But Worcestershire County Council refused to give the names or positions of their top paid executives, four of whom received between £104,542 and £158,886. Across the UK, six town hall chiefs are earning more than £200,000 a year – well above Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s £188,849 salary.
39 Comments
These are not unreasonable salaries for heads of large organisations. What needs to be targetted are the swathes of middle and senior managers within the ‘Best Value’ and ‘Performance Review’ sub-industries who produce little but lengthy, irrelevant documentation. The vast majority of council workers are not especially well paid, work hard and do necessary jobs which benefit others.
Bull…. Most of us work well over all the hours god sends each week to try and make enough money to live on and the fat cat sit on the back sides and get £100,000+ Show me where they work harder or longer or with more stress than I (or for that matter a hell of a lot of the working people of the black country) do.
WHY WORRY - THE TAX PAYER CAN AFFORD IT . PERHAPS WE COULD COUGH UP THE MONEY FOR A NEW KITCHEN OR BATHROOM WHILE WE’RE AT IT .
They are worth every penny, or so they tell us.
vote wisely
we should all now what all council workers get to see whats justified as taxes pay them the same as MPS expences
Phil,
What Council workers get paid is public information. If you want it so much, request it.
If the public dislike council workers so much and think we do very little and get paid alot, you try living without the services we provide. We empty your bins, we clean your streets, we look after your elderly, we make sure your street lights work and that where you live isn’t allowed to rot! The vast majority of the public have absolutely no concept of how many services their Council takes care of and how many things are done just to keep the population going.
I’m sick of hearing how cusshy people think local authority jobs are and sensationalist rags like the express and star play up to this. Its a popular subject which people can get irritated by and grab headlines. People moan about the heads of large public organisations being paid over £100k a year, thats good value in comparison to say a footballer who contributes very little to society, works for a few hours and gets paid £100k+ a week!
Whilst I do agree that some jobs are over paid and over rated, don’t paint everyone of us with the same brush!
Actually Peter, yes, I’ve seen these heads of councils at work, they too put in very long hours and
work hard. I wouldn’t want their jobs at all, in many cases it takes over their life - just like similar positions in the private sector. The E&S campaign against council workers has manipulated some people, it seems. I prefer to find out the facts for myself.
ZeELK if council workers work so had hard for so little how come they dont leave in droves to work in the private sector
And this is one of the reasons why the country and its services are in such a state of disarray. No Council worker should be paid such a high salary, at the expense of losing or underfunding public services.
With reference to ZeELK, the council workers may empty our bins and clean our streets but as Phil say’s if they don’t like it or if they really feel so hard done by then they should get jobs else where. All you ever hear from council workers is poor me were so hard done to, they get free parking in town worth I don’t know how much a year (as stated in an E&S Story a matter of weeks ago) they’re always throwing their teddies out of their prams and threatening to walk out because they want more money and as to looking after the elderly my great aunt is 90 years old and has to pay around £150 per week for meals on wheels and for carers to come out 3 times a day because she can’t cope on her own, this weekly cost shot up last year from around £90 I think upto £150 all because our local council wanted to cash in and give themselves huge salaries. If she hadn’t worked all her life to buy her own house she be looked after for nothing, but because she’s got a bit of savings she’s penalised. If she went into a home it would cost HER a shed load more per week I know but all the council would do is use the money in her house to pay for it. So looking after our elderly is I think not, bleed them dry more like.
Something like Cats, trough, noses and fat come to mind.
They’re just following the other parasites in Westminster.
right miss callaneous have you noticed when they say the councils are going to be privatised they vote for strike action why
i once workred for the council, poor pay no recogniton
too many lazy managers, lack of planning, no customer care
fortunatley i got out and went some where else.
Every year the services are falling below the wayside, yet these maanagers
get inflated salaries, they do very little to justify.
Time to take stock, revaluate the services and pay them accordingly.
13. Phil and 11. Miss C, If you where on 19k a year and they said to fit in with new pay scales you are now on 14k a year whould you except that with out a fight.
So what if they get free parking because they are employed by the local council. If you worked at Marks and Spencers for example you get a staff discount so why are council employees in your eyes exempt from such a “discount”
I could not care less how much people get payed if someone said to you do you job and oh have a 25k a year pay rise I am sure you would not say “no thats far to much money”
9. Well said - most of the people i know who work at Telford Council have been there since school.No-one leaves because its a cushy life,0 day fortnights,gold plated pensions.Half of them would not last 5 minutes in the private sector where you have to be accountable.
baggie boy its the justifacation for whats being done so you think its right that the binmen had massive bonuses at christmas then if they are having to have pay cuts of 5k then doesnt that show they where overpaid in the first place and some also had increases.well now they can look for work in the private sector but i still doubt it
Taxpayers Alliance = Rent A Headline (aka First Brigade of Something for Nothing)
All the Taxpayers Alliance do is produce smoke and mirrors figures and never put forward any realistic proposals of how they would change things. Perhaps the Taxpayers Alliance are comfortable entrusting the public purse with fresh-faced ‘Wayne’ from the local college armed with a slide rule and a B-Tec in Business Studies?
A disgrace that senior staff and directors are getting a 4.6% pay increase whilst rank and file staff take a 1.9% increase and re-grading which is effectively a pay cut. Anyone in business would recognise that de-motivated staff equals poor services and products.
Councils provide many hundreds of services however, they need to provide the services people want - not what they think people want. Perhaps then tax payers could recognise ‘value of money’. There’s no connection between what’s paid out in council tax and what’s received as services. Directors need to prove their worth.
Well. I work within a council. I am un-amused with the huge salaries paid to those above us. As are most of my office. But we aren’t going to change that in reality are we ?
Its all about their responsibilities. As they go up so do the salaries.
Most council workers are paid a small fraction of the numbers shown in the article. And it is those countless thousands who do all of the shouting when their jobs are threatened, in an attempt to preserve what little they have.
Why stay with the council ?
Well for me, it’s a secure job, with fairly good working conditions and fair allowances. Ok there are times when the systems don’t work properly and annoy everyone, but these things happen, we live with it.
The risk of the private sectors higher wages just aren’t worth it.
Some of you have mentioned the various benefit and social systems that are penalising life. Well they come from a higher level than the average council.
The privatisation of council services, there’s a can of worms. Job losses aside, there are enough bad outcomes out there that indicate whenever a private company recons it can save the council money in a particular service; ultimately it is that service that deteriorates. Putting it right again results in more money being spent than was initially going to be saved. Enough said?
Well Baggie Boy, The only reason they are cutting the pay is because they suddenly realised that the employees had been overpaid for a number of years and nobody had noticed it or bought it to anyones attention. I’m sure there weren’t many staff knocking on the payroll peoples door at say “excuse me according to my staff handbook I shouldn’t be getting paid this much money” has anyone had to pay back what they have been overpaid? NO. Like a number of other people have said if you’re not happy get another job and stop bleeting about it, there again you wouldn’t get anything that cushy. It’s people like me who are paying the salaries of these lazy middle management, they should be made to justify their salary. As for thr the M&S staff getting staff discounts, they are actually spending money on their own products. I bet what save doesn’t cover their parking costs per year.
ZeELK - I totally agree with your comments. And there you go again Miss Cellaneous rears her ugly head again. E & S dont always print accurate stuff. Not all council workers get free parking. Its mainly those who have to use their car for their job. i.e Social Workers, Surveyors etc. Although some of the high tier managers do get free parking - which I dont tottaly agree with…. But I am on a reasonable wage, work hard. Apart from genral career progression , I dont see the need to leave my job and work in the private sector. I worked in the private sector for 6 years before I was emplyed by a local authority, I have no problem going back there - I just dont need to. I am not moaning about how hard done by we are. I am moaning about the amount of people who think we sit on our backsides all day filing our nails or literally doing nothing. When you are working for a local authority with drug users, mentally ill, vulnerable children, in sometimes heartbreaking situations (which i do enjoy most of the time) - let me know we have a cushy number.
P.S I dont agree that cheif officers should get paid so much either!
I work for a local Council and I could earn more money in the private sector but I choose not to because I enjoy working in the local area and I get good flexi-time hours if I ever get the chance to use them. It’s a choice I have made so I don’t moan about the fact that I earn less. However, if so many of you think that working for Council’s is so cushy then how come we advertise for staff no-one ever applies?? I’ll tell you why - poor pay, long working hours, the stress of working with bad systems and the fact that you lot in the private sector always criticise the workers. We don’t make the systems we just provide the best service we can to the public with the resources we have made available to us.
I am just as shocked as many of you about the amount of money that some of these execs have earned, especially since some of them did a poor job and went away with a golden handshake. BUT that does not mean that everyone who works for a local authority is overpaid and underworked. Many of us are facing pay cuts, changes to pensions, etc and yet we are all expected to do more for less money. And all this coupled with the fact that everyone is on our backs about the easy life we are supposed to have but actually never get.
On another note to Miss Cellaneous - you clearly don’t understand about Equal Pay - it isn’t that the Council’s suddenly realised people were overpaid. The whole evaluation was carried out because there are inconsistencies in pay. There are some staff who have been paid more than others for doing the same job. As money is tight (because the execs had it all) rather than increase pay to a reasonable level they have reduced everyone doing the same job to the bare minimum. Some of the staff affected are earning less than £12k a year and are facing cuts and you think they are being paid too much!! Read into the facts before you criticise. What the media also haven’t told you is that some of the staff actually getting a ‘pay rise’ are having their jobs restructured or removed so in effect they are getting nothing atall. Don’t be fooled, the public sector is just as ruthless as the private sector they just disguise it more.
well said zeelk and miss opinion - people who actually know what they are talking about.
why don’t phil and miss cellaneous come back when they actually have an INFORMED opinion (and not just one they’ve picked up from someone else). either that or emmigrate - we could do without such small minded folk.
i am disabled and get £14 over what the goverment says i need to live on.65p in every pound of that money i have to pay in rent. that is higher than any credit card or any loan you can ever get.feel like takeing my weekly money to them and say you pay out everything i have to and then find enough for food.
Miss Cellaneous….it’s people like you who pay the salaries is it?! Because of course, it’s well known that council employees are council tax exempt. ARE THEY HELL! Silly comment. Miss C. And as Miss Opinion states, only a few get parking passes, it’s by no means a widespread ‘perk’.
I know that this is the Express and Star, and the lines between fact and fiction are often blurred, but let’s try and be sensible, eh?!
We will always hear the bad side of things when it comes to council workers as they live off money we pay in. Unfortunately, all I hear from friends that work for the government is that so and so is off on long term sick and so and so has 40 years service and does nothing just waiting for their pension. Sad state of affairs in my view.
Stig, are you telling me that no-one in the private sector is ever off sick and that there aren’t people with long service that are just waiting to retire?? I have worked in both the private and public sector so I know for a fact that these people are everywhere. I also know that under the correct management and direction people who take the mick are removed irrespective of whether they are in the private or public sector. And for every one person that takes the mick there are hundreds of others who don’t. Why is everyone so quick to criticise local authority staff. We’re not all bad, some of us are hard working and are making positive changes to the way in which things are done giving you a better service. Is all this in vain, should we just leave you all to rot?
Much of what the council does is support services stuff, the stuff you don’t even think of from day to day but you’d soon miss if you personally needed it.
Pretty much most of it could be done by private sector or third sector. Though not perhaps the same service as cheap.
I have no problem with their pay. Its, if anything, lower than other sectors of the economy for similar sized responsibility. We aren’t talking about someone overseeing a £50k budget and 4 staff are we? No, its a budget in the many millions, services for hundreds of thousands of people and a staff structure of thousands.
I’d be happier if thye didn’t waste my taxes on other things but no problem with the pay. Or the free parking a few have.
all i can say is vote wisely in may it’s time for a real change in politics,labour tory there all ripping us off with crazey money grabbing ideas,just think about who will do real work for our local areas,enough said so stop moaning about this spineless country and start making your voices heard.
Voting won’t change a thing. Labour has been cleaning up after the mess left by the Conservatives for years. All politicians are the same, it’s people that make the difference.
Councils are getting more staff from the private sector now in order to shake up services to become more efficient. You do not attract any high caliber people with salaries under £100K. Senior council managers still earn only half of what they could earn in the private sector (if they are lucky). You also pay for ridiculous private sector salaries by buying their products.
Miss Cellaneous - Do you work, or have you ever worked for a local authority - its sounds like you have absolutely no idea - and just resurrect your STUPID thoughts on the back of someone else’s silly ideas. Blah Blah Blah, RF and LS - thank you - at least someone who knows what they’re talking about and obviously done their research or work in the local authority themselves.
REMEMBER DONT BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ IN THE PAPER!! - Do your research 1st folks. Yes I am sure there are a minority of “slackers” and those “waiting to retire” in the council, and there are people who go off long term sick - but believe me I KNOW the coucnil are clamping down on that. I know of at least two people in the last 12 months whose contracts have been terminated as a result of long term sickness (people who have worked for the authority for years). Its not a decision taken lightly by the authority to termnate contracts, but if they have no choice they will. I would also like to resolve a few myths brought on by general publice about council workers:-
* wE DONT ALL HAVE FREE PARKING
* WE DO HAVE TO PAY FULL COUNCIL TAX - WITHOUT DISCOUNT (UNLESS YOU GET THE 25% EVERY SINGLE PERSON IS ENTITLED TO) - CAN YOU IMAGINE 18,000 IN WOLVES NOT PAYING COUNCIL TAX???
* OWNER OCCUPIERS DO NOT GET FREE REPAIRS CARRIED OUT AT THEIR HOMES
* WE DONT GET FREE CONCERT TICKETS AT THE CIVIC HALL
* WE PAY 6% TOWARDS OUR PENSIONS - AND LIKE MANY OTHER PRIVATE PENSIONS WE GET A LUMP SUM AND MONTHLY PAYMENTS (FINAL SALARY BASED)- IN FACT MOST PEOPLE I KNOW WHO HAVE RETIRED FROM THE LOCAL AUTHORITY HAVE HAD TO FIND PART TIME JOBS.
* SINGLE STATUS WAS A JOB EVALUATION PROCESS - NOT A STRATEGY FOR CUTTING PEOPLES SALARIES BECASUE THEY GOT PAID TOO MUCH!
* WE DONT GET ANY PERKS - GOLDEN HANDSHAKES, BONUSES, EXTRA HOLIDAYS, WEEKENDS AWAY AT HEALTH SPA’S (LIKE MANY PRIVATE SECTOR ORGANISATIONS DO.
* WORKING FOR THE COUNCIL IS NO LONGER A JOB FOR LIFE - TIMES HAVE CHANGED AND A LOT OF WORK IS NOW BEING CONTRACTED OUT TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR
MOST of us are hard working individuals, who are happy where we are working, albeit working with technology that is at least 20 years old and with air con which is pre-historic!
Hi Miss Opinion. I worked for a council for 10 years. I remember someone vehemently insisting to me that I got a discount on my Poll tax and then Council Tax because I was an employee. They obviously knew more than I did, because I never got that discount!
Unfortunately, people need to have scapegoats and the E&S has carried out a campaign against council workers for some time now. You won’t change their opinion if they do not have the intelligence to change it themselves.
miss opinion,
i work in the care industry employed by the council and i totally agree with you. i do work very hard for the little that i get, but it pays my bills. and yet im not complaining, so thanks for putting your comment down it shows that not everyone gets privleges i know i dont.
Miss Cellaneous,
i work in care work and as a care worker myself who gets paid very little but find my job very rewarding i find your comments offensive, why dont you do my work for one day 10hr shifts, making sure people are well looked after in our care. why dont you look after your eldery reletives i myself also volunters to help out people in need a few hrs of your time makes a difference.
well said miss opinion,ive worked for the council for 14 years now and seen many changes in that time not many for the better i might add,services privatised only for them to be run at a lower level of standard.the grass isn,t always greener on the other side.we are not door mats but it seems like people want to treat us like it.
What people don’t realise is that these ‘fat cat’ salaries are NOT being paid to most council workers. Most council workers are paid LESS than an equivalent job in the private sector.
Why do we stay? Well, some of us are stupid enough to want to help people.