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Wolverhampton council paid top officer £1,134 A DAY over 12 months

Cash-strapped Wolverhampton council has paid one of its officers nearly £250,000 over the last year, it can be revealed.

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For the past 12 months the authority has paid £241,542 to an agency for the services of Linda Sanders, the interim strategic director for people.

The extraordinary figure equates to £1,134 a day. She has been in post for almost two years and is one of 10 senior officers employed by the council on an interim basis.

The others include interim education director Julien Kramer, who has been on £182,640 a year since he replaced Dr Jim McElligott in the post in October 2015.

The wages eclipse that of the authority's top officer, managing director Keith Ireland, who took home £154,000 last year.

Opposition Tory leader Councillor Wendy Thompson has branded the figures 'utter madness' and 'offensive to the taxpayer'.

She has called for an investigation into governance at the Labour controlled authority, while union bosses have hit out at the 'disconnect' between pay for top bosses and 'the real world'.

The council has shed 2,000 jobs since 2010, cutting its workforce by almost a third. Hundreds more jobs could go by next April.

It needs to save £54 million by 2019/20 and is set to sign off on a second successive annual council tax increase of 3.99 per cent.

Mrs Thompson said the high wages paid to high level staff were 'an unnecessary extravagance' at a time when the council was having to tighten its belt.

"It is utter madness to pay out such high amounts when you consider what is going on at the council," she said.

"With cuts to services and job losses for frontline staff, people will rightly question the sense in paying an officer nearly a quarter of a million pounds.

"Plenty of other more successful local authorities have managed to operate without paying such extortionate wages.

"Interim staff should have a defined role for a set period of time. There is absolutely no justification for the council to employ people for years on this basis."

She added that there should be 'a thorough investigation' into the pay packets of senior officers at the council.

Unite national officer for local authorities, Fiona Farmer said: "There appears to be a serious disconnect between the pay for top bosses at City of Wolverhampton Council with the real world of millions of people struggling to make ends meet. We are entering into a Black Country 'Alice in Wonderland'.

"Generally, local government executives should be sharing the financial pain that the rest of the council workforce has had to endure, not having their snouts in the trough of diminishing cash for local government. The fact that this council has lost 2,000 staff since 2010, with hundreds more jobs set to go before April, should have acted as some sort of moral restraint on outrageous salaries, Councils really should be eliminating the use of agency workers at a time when services are being slashed."

Councillor Milkinder Jaspal, the authority's cabinet member for governance, said: "We have looked at the going rates for officers in local government and tried to get the best possible deals for the tax payer.

"We want to get the best possible staff available, but it is not always possible to employ them on a full time basis.

"I fully accept and understand that there is a demand from the public to see value for money when we employ officers." Mrs Sanders joined Wolverhampton council in January 2015 having previously worked as director of adult, community and housing services at Dudley Council.

In 2011, when she was director of social care at the London Borough of Hillingdon, she apologised after a High Court judge ruled that the council unlawfully detained a 21-year-old autistic man by keeping him in a care unit for nearly a year.

The amounts paid to interim officers at Black Country local authorities have come under increased scrutiny after it emerged Walsall Council's new director Julie Alderson is on £200,000 a year.

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