Council staff on £100k a year

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.