Councils have hit back after campaign group the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) produced figures appearing to show that 2,314 council employees are paid more than £100,000 a year.
The campaign body produced its tenth annual “Town Hall Rich List” which details remuneration packages paid to senior council officials.
It said the list “showcases” executives who have received bumper pay-offs after poor performance in their jobs.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “The average council tax bill has gone up by more than £900 over the last twenty years and spending has gone through the roof.
“Disappointingly, many local authorities are now responding to financial reality through further tax rises and reducing services rather than scaling back top pay.
“Despite many in the public sector facing a much-needed pay freeze to help bring the public finances under control, many town hall bosses are continuing to pocket huge remuneration packages, with the number of people on six-figure deals actually going up since last year.
“There are talented people in the public sector who are trying to deliver more for less, but the sheer scale of these packages raise serious questions about efficiency and priorities.”
The wording of the TPA’s press release is ambiguous about what the payments cover, at one point referring to “local council employees whose remuneration exceeds £100,000”.
However, buried in the report is an admission that the figures relate not to salaries but to total remuneration, including “salary, benefits in kind, expenses, bonuses, any stated election duty fees, redundancy payments and employer’s pension contributions”.
The report also a list of the top 25 highest rewarded council staff during 2015-16, with an unnamed financial officer at London Borough of Haringey listed at number 21, receiving a payment of £347,446.
Figures from the council’s statement of accounts show that figure is made up of a salary, fees and allowances totalling £66,054, a redundancy payment of £97,303 and employer pension contributions of £184,079. The previous year, the officer had received a total package of £131,974.
A Haringey Council spokesperson said: “In the face of ongoing cuts to our budget by central government, we have completely transformed the way the council works.
“This has included losing staff from every level of our workforce and reducing the size of our senior leadership team so that we now have fewer officers whose total remuneration exceeds £100,000.”
Sunderland City Council’s former director of finance and interim head of paid service, Sonia Tognarelli, appears at number 2 in the list, with total remuneration of £605,958.
The authority’s statement of accounts for 2015/16 shows that this figure includes a basic salary of £155,393, a redundancy payment of £131,413 and pension contributions of £319,152, to reflect lost future contributions.
A statement from Sunderland Council said that the TPA had included figures for eight senior employees no longer employed by the council, including former chief executive Dr Dave Smith.
Claire Kober, chair of the Local Government Association’s resources board, said: “Local government is committed to providing value for money to taxpayers and, nationally, incoming chief executives are being paid lower salaries than their predecessors’ and average chief executive salaries continue to decline year-on-year.
“The pay of senior council staff is set by politically proportionate committees of elected councillors and is open to a high level of scrutiny and democratic accountability as a result.”
Late last week, Bournemouth Borough Council approved a redundancy package of £394,000 for its former chief executive Tony Williams.
The government is introducing a cap on all public sector exit payments at £95,000; and ‘clawback’ of redundancy compensation when senior officers return to the public sector after receiving a redundancy package.
