24plusnews.co.uk Rotating Header Image

Public sector pay

Bath Action Day

Nov 7th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
Comments are off for this post

On Saturday, November 5th, Bath TPA supporters gathered to put a rocket under the position of B&NES’ Chief Executive. At a busy Farmers’ Market at Green Park Station, they collected a number of signatures calling for the next Bath council boss to take a pay cut of £50,000 from the current sum of £210,000 (including pension benefits) to £160,000.

Bath TPA supporters (left to right), Matt Showering, Ben Lodge and Tim Newark show the signatures for their petition collected at Bath’s Farmers’ Market.

Many locals, fed up with high wages being spent on senior council officials rather than frontline services, called for an even bigger pay cut.

Ben Lodge collects signature from Bath stallholder.

This demand has had broad support from across the political spectrum in Bath, including a recent letter in the Bath Chronicle from the local Green Party calling for the same council wage cut.

Matt Showering collects signature from Bath stallholder.

It was sparked by the incoming Chief Executive of Islington Borough Council, Lesley Seary, volunteering a pay cut of £50,000 to bring her wage down to £160,000. ‘We are committed to tackling inequality in all its forms,’ she said, ‘and putting money back in the pockets of our residents.’ If it’s good enough for her, why not the next Chief Executive in Bath?

Tim Newark, Bath & South-West grassroots coordinator, collects signature from Bath stallholder.

Vicky Newark collects signature from Bath stallholder.

Tim Newark, Bath & South-West TaxPayers’ Alliance

Cambridgeshire county council vote themselves 25 per cent pay hike

Oct 19th, 2011
by Tom Welsh.
Comments are off for this post

In the face of angry protests outside Shire Hall, Cambridgeshire County councillors have voted themselves a massive 25 per cent pay rise. According to a review panel, councillors were ‘undervalued’ on their existing allowances and a rise to £9,500 was needed to allow ‘local democracy to prosper’. Council Leader Nick Clarke will be even better off. From £29,246, he will now take home £38,000 a year with his ‘special responsibility allowance.’

Councillors cannot justify these increases, especially at a time of supposed public spending restraint.

The total increase in spending is not small. Conservative-majority Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC) has 69 local representatives, and with extra payments made to Cabinet members, leaders and spokesmen of all parties, the total amount set aside for allowances will rise by £166,000 to £929,000 a year.

Put into context, CCC is trying to make £161 million of necessary spending cuts over the next five years. Politicians will not convince voters of the importance of savings if they cut with one hand and feather their own nest with the other.

Councillors have explained away their pay hike as the recommendation of an independent review panel, a public-spirited attempt to attract candidates of more diverse backgrounds into local politics. Of course, councils should make it attractive for ordinary people to become councillors. But while other council workers are facing redundancy, largesse for elected officials is unjustifiable.

Instead Cambridgeshire councillors should follow the lead of their chief executive, Mark Lloyd, who took a voluntary 5 per cent pay cut in July. Although he still earns an excessive £186,167, he was right to lead from the front.

From a blog he wrote about Mark Lloyd’s voluntary pay cut, Council Leader Nick Clarke knows the weakness of his own position:

‘One of the most important characteristics of a really good leader, I’ve always felt, is the ability to lead by example.

And when residents are finding life tough, and tightening their belts because money is tight, council’s [sic] can’t be out of step with what the people who pay for services are experiencing.’

Given these comments, Nick Clarke will no doubt forego his extra £9,000, and Cambridgeshire councillors will reverse this pay hike at the earliest possible moment.

Town Hall bosses’ spending on credit cards revealed

Oct 18th, 2011
by Chris Daniel.
Comments are off for this post

The latest in a series of investigations by the Daily Telegraph into public bodies’ use of credit cards exposes the bills run up by local authority chief executives across the UK. Earlier this year we led the campaign to uncover huge amounts being spent by Whitehall civil servants racking up million pound credit card bills, and have exposed similar waste at many of Britain’s biggest quangos.

The findings show that town hall bosses spent £2.6million on luxury perks using corporate credit cards, including concerts, sport events, dining at Michelin-starred restaurants, tailored clothing and fine whiskies. Council chief executives themselves have expenses tens of thousands of pounds, despite many enjoying six-figure salaries, and at a time when councils need to make all of the savings they can.

Some of the biggest expenses claims were from Colin Carmichael, chief executive of Canterbury Council (salary £135,000), who claimed expenses totalling £18,181; Tim Shields, the chief executive of Hackney council (£203,376), claimed £34,186; Andrew Taylor, chief executive of Lincoln City Council (£149,445), claimed £11,403; and John Foster, chief executive of Islington Council (£210,000), claimed £14,815.

Here are just a few of their claims:

  •  The chief executive of Hackney council spent £6,000 on flights to the 2008 Beijing Olympics for “training” to which he flew business class.
  • Colin Hilton, former chief executive at Liverpool City council, spent £1,152 taking colleagues to a sold out Coldplay concert.
  • Andrew Taylor, chief executive of Lincoln City Council charged more than £4,000 to his card for flights to Beijing, Frankfurt and Krakow for his assistant, the mayor and his wife. Other items he charged for included £2.17 mini-bar bill and a cash withdrawal of £362.77 which was classified as “unidentified expenditure” when asked by the Telegraph.

Of course many chief executives use corporate credit cards to expense small work-related items, and this is often the most cost effective means of doing so. But evidence suggests that, in practice, taxpayers are footing the bill for much more.

Some of the other favourite destinations include the luxury Dorchester Hotel in London; the Hotel Gray D’Albion in Cannes; the Hard Day’s Night, a Beatles themed hotel in Liverpool; trips to the world renowned Belfry Golf Course; a five star spa in Cardiff Bay; and Lushy Beg, a private 75-acre island.

Many of the items claimed for have little relevance and questionable benefit to the residents council bosses work for. Council chief executives already receive more than substantial salaries that, if they feel they need to stay in luxury hotels, mean they could easily pay for it themselves. This sentiment was echoed by an unidentified chief executive of a UK local authority who said:

“If I spend any money for work I just get it reimbursed but champagne lunches and first class travel is shocking. Chief executives incur costs in their jobs but we are paid well and you should not exploit that. No-one expects a chief executive to stay in a fleapit, but there is a big difference between the Dorchester and a fleapit.”

Unsurprisingly, the LGA has leapt to councils’ defence. They claim:

“It is part and parcel of the job that they have to travel to meet top people from the public and private sectors, and this can involve stays in hotels and the proportionate use of hospitality.”

But they completely miss the point. No-one is claiming council chief executives won’t incur reasonable expenses while carrying out their day jobs, but it is unacceptable for taxpayers to pick up the bill for visits to the Dorchester and luxury restaurants that many can only dream of. Such a staunch defence of irresponsible spending suggests the LGA doesn’t care about the interests of taxpayers or residents. If councils were transparent, residents could decide whether they agree with this sort of spending. The LGA claim that the spending is “properly audited and transparent”, but if it weren’t for newspapers like the Telegraph and bodies like ourselves, such waste would go unnoticed.

While they are one of the more cost-effective means of paying for items, corporate credit cards are inadequately monitored. Far too many dubious claims slip through the net and must be brought under control. If chief executives had to pay for the items up-front and then wait before being reimbursed, the number of lavish claims would almost certainly fall considerably.

Procurement cards were supposed to improve this more inefficient system of claiming expenses, but our research, along with the Telegraph’s inquiry, shows that this system needs to be tightened up to stop taxpayers picking up the bill for unnecessary luxuries.

New TPA Research: TfL Surplus Staff

Sep 27th, 2011
by The TaxPayers' Alliance.
Comments are off for this post

The TPA has discovered that Transport for London (TfL) has been paying the salaries of dozens of staff that have been languishing in a ‘Redeployment Unit’. The unit is for employees who have no formal role but are being kept on, rather than made redundant.

The approximate cost of paying the salaries for staff in the scheme is £3.5 million since 2004.

For the full details click here.

TfL define their scheme as: “a Unit, [for employees] who have been displaced and transferred prior to securing an alternative role in TfL or leaving the organisation”. The maximum time an employee can be in the Redeployment Unit is supposed to be four months.

In many cases these surplus employees are kept on for months on end before taking on other roles then returning to the scheme for a second time. 19 employees have been on the scheme for more than 500 days on an average salary of around £44,000. That is likely to have cost more than £1.2 million.

For the full details click here.

Tube drivers recently secured a bonus for working during the Olympics and the RMT has threatened strikes over reforms to pay and perks for tube workers.

Anger over fire officer’s increased pension

Aug 1st, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

When the Chief Fire Officer of Humberside Fire and Rescue Service retired, the Fire Authority took the decision to temporarily promote four officers. All four were eligible to retire.  Anyone who understands the way public sector pensions work (and those councillors on the Fire Authority Board should) will tell you this temporary move was going to cost taxpayers dearly, because when these officers retire their pensions will be calculated using the higher salary.

Mark Rhodes (temporarily promoted to Assistant  Officer) applied to retire just one day after he had completed two months in his new job, and today has left the fire service.  As a result of his promotion, he has seen his lump sum increase by £29,000, and his yearly pension will be around £3,000 higher. 

This story not only infuriates taxpayers, it also infuriates firefighters too, who see those at the top cashing-in on their senior positions. In my opinion, what it worse than the increased payments themselves is the sheer incompetence of the fire authority board members. You won’t be surprised to read that the chairman of the fire authority has refused to comment. Instead, a statement was issued.

“The Fire Authority, like some other services, decided to make temporary appointments of senior uniformed fire officers to fill  vacancies in preparation for the retirement of the then Chief Fire Officer.”

Tell us something we don’t know as the chairman of the fire authority retreats to his bunker as soon as the heat is turned up. Taxpayers have a right to know if board members were aware of the financial cost of making these temporary promotions. If not, why not? Who advised them? Was their advice taken?

Members of the fire authority are paid a basic allowance of £4,457.04. The chairman, John Briggs, also receives a special responsibility allowance of £10,703.46. In addition to this, as a councillor on North Lincolnshire Council he receives a basic allowance of £7,638. As deputy leader he also receives a special responsibility allowance of £14,544. A grand total of £37,072.50. He is paid enough to answer difficult questions. He needs to start answering them.

Bath Council disappoints

Jul 28th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
Comments are off for this post

For a moment the spirit of the TPA seemed to be with Bath and North East Somerset Council as they discussed the possibility of dumping their ludicrously overpaid chief executive. A report to a meeting of the council’s restructuring implementation committee (big name, little results) asked them to consider reducing the number of senior council managers and saving £2 million. Part of this would have involved doing away with the position of chief executive—currently paid over £212,000—and having the role covered by three other senior managers. The idea being that some of the money frittered away in senior pay packets would go to frontline services.

Come Monday this week, however, at a meeting to which the public were excluded, the three-member B&NES committee, featuring one Lib-Dem, one Conservative and one Labour member, rejected the advice of the report and chose to keep their chief executive. Reading the 20-page document they were asked to consider, it seems very much that the proposed re-structuring is merely a game of musical chairs with executive posts simply being given different titles. I can’t see any precise reference whatsoever to saving taxpayers’ money through pruning the management structure.

As one disappointed Bath resident put it: ‘It sends the wrong signal out to employees losing their jobs and it also annoys people like me who have to pay the same council tax for fewer services yet see some guy get paid a stupid salary.’ Exactly!

Cabinet Office order to reveal top earners details

Jul 26th, 2011
by Robert Oxley.
Comments are off for this post

The Cabinet Office has published an updated list of the top earners in the civil service and government quangos. Martin Rosenbaum has the full list of new additions on his blog here. The updated list includes 27 officials who did not appear on the original Cabinet Office release on July 1st of this year. The officials are all civil servants and high-flyers at quangos such as the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority. Including the 27 on this list, there are 359 public sector employees who earn more than £150,000 (£8,000 more than the Prime Minster is paid).

We have been at the forefront campaigning for transparency in public sector pay. We published our Town Hall Rich list earlier this year and will continue to campaign for transparency in all central and local government staff pay packages. While it is a positive step forward to see that this data has been published it is a shame that it took an intervention from the Information Commissioner to get the full list released. Civil servants should not be resisting the moves for greater transparency. Openness delivers more efficient public services and is an important part of the democratic process.

It’s worth noting though there are still some public bodies that are excluded from publishing their pay packages. The BBC, Royal Mail and the FSA haven’t had to publish their top salary packages and they should follow suit.

Southampton’s wave of strikes

Jul 18th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

Last month John Henvest, our coordinator in Hampshire, wrote about taxpayers being taken for a ride in Southampton. Many council workers were hiring taxis, rather than using their own vehicles because the council reduced the mileage rate paid from a very generous 54p per mile to the HMRC recommended 45p. At a time when the council is trying to reduce its costs, some workers deliberately wasted our money in a futile bid to get generous perks reintroduced.

The problems in Southampton, however, have not just been restricted to taxi rides. Southampton City Council have decided to introduce new pay and conditions for its workers, and want them to accept a pay reduction of between 2% and 5.5%. No-one wants a reduction in pay, but at a time when many in the private sector are losing their jobs through forced redundancies, and are also having to accept pay cuts to keep themselves in work, council workers have to accept the economic realities of life.

Southampton's refuse collectors are currently on strike

Instead, a wave of strikes have taken place. In an attempt to hold the council to ransom, bin men have walked out, leaving over a million bin bags to litter the city’s streets. If many of the workers at your council took a month off work at the same time, you probably wouldn’t notice the difference. Bin men go on strike and everyone notices, as rubbish is piled high and vermin starts increasing.

On Wednesday last week, more than 600 workers went on strike, and a protest march and rally took place. To compound the council’s problems,  unions have also launched a £12 million legal battle. In scenes reminiscent of the 1970s, the lives of ordinary council taxpayers have been left a misery, yet despite the continuing strike action, around 90% of employees have signed new contracts in order to protect their jobs, and the council estimates reducing salary costs will protect 400 jobs.

A similar proposal was put forward by the Labour group on Hull City Council before the elections in May. It felt by asking the unions to accept a 5% pay cut, jobs would be protected. Surely union leaders want as many of their members in employment as possible? Compared to the private sector, a job in the public sector is still relatively safe, better paid, and even after proposed government reforms, will still have generous pension entitlements.

This is something the unions and those striking in Southampton need to think about, and in the meantime get back to work.

Senior officer in Hull walks away with £77K

Jul 7th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

Councils are apparently the most efficient of all public sector organisations. I have always thought this was more a reflection of the state of government departments and Quangos, rather than saying councils are efficient. All too often we see examples of wasteful council largesse, and this story is no exception.

Until recently, Susan de Val was the chief legal officer for Hull City Council. The legal department has had more of its fair share of problems in the last few years, and she is the second chief legal officer to resign in the last four years. When I say resign, I mean she jumped before she was pushed. In recent months the advice from the legal department has not been of the highest quality. This has left egg on the faces of some senior councillors and senior officers, therefore a change at the top was needed.

Thanks for the money!

What happened next is a classic example of someone in the public sector being rewarded for failure. Ms De Val, who has only been working for the authority for two years, has walked away with £77k. The council’s reasoning is it would have had to appoint an independent advisor to investigate Ms De Val’s conduct, and would have also had to suspend her on full pay. Paying her off was seen as the cheapest option, and she will also have waived her right to take the council to an employment tribunal.

She has now freely walked away from Hull City Council with an officially unblemished record. The council cannot give her a bad reference. As matters have not been properly investigated, anything anyone says about her is hearsay. I have no doubt all she will do is take a short holiday, and then pick-up another council job, probably on an interim basis on an inflated salary, until the dust settles and a permanent job becomes available.

This is what will happen to Andrea Hill, the chief executive of Suffolk County Council who walked away with £218k this week. There seems to be a council merry-go-round, where you get paid off, walk into another job, get paid off again, and then walk into yet another. Taxpayers lose out as these people get wealthy at our expense. When you ask some of these high-earning officers to take a voluntary pay cut, most will laugh in your face.

While no one wants a lengthy and expensive disciplinary process, at the same time no one should benefit financially as a result of their incompetence. This is what appears to have happened in this case. I have already written about some of the spending decisions of Hull City Council. Since the new administration took over in May, £500k has been spent on reducing the cost of school meals for all primary school children in the city, irrespective of whether their parents are on high incomes and do not need a subsidy. Start adding these figures together, along with news today that the council failed to collect nearly £3 million in council tax last year, and you get over £3.5 million that could have been used to fund front line services and perhaps reduce the tax burden for the city’s residents.

A few years ago Hull City Council was at the bottom of the pile. It was one of the worst performing councils in the country. Wasting money in the ways I have outlined does not fill me with hope for the future. The council needs to pull its socks up and collect the council tax due, not waste it on subsidising school meals for those who can easily afford to pay the full rate, and certianly not reward senior officers for failure.

Merseyside councils working together to reduce costs

Jun 3rd, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

In February, the leader of Liverpool City Council, Cllr Joe Anderson, wrote to the prime minister withdrawing the city’s involvement in the big society pilot scheme. He said it would not work as a result of spending cuts.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised to read that the same council leader has been brokering a deal with other council leaders in Merseyside to reduce back-office costs. In a quote to the Liverpool Daily Post he said:

“I raised the issue of procurement and sharing services together with a view to save money because we need to save money. I called on all the leaders of the councils on Merseyside to look at it.

We are looking at options to save money between us. They were all certainly up for it. If it’s legal services, Sefton could save money by using ours (Liverpool city council’s). Why have six different payment roll departments?

It’s to do with saving money. If you can do this through procurement you can save money.”

It’s good to read these councils have been listening. This is something we have been continually saying, and other councils have been involved in the same exercise as these councils in Merseyside. Last year, South Holland and East Lindsey District Councils in Lincolnshire agreed  to merge five back-office services. They estimate it will save  £30 million over the next ten years. Last month is was reported Oldham and Rochdale Councils are set to merge services, and this week is has been reported Wokingham Council has merged its legal services department with the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

All of this proves when councils work together and explore new ways of working, there are considerable benefits for taxpayers. They need to go further though, and ensure they cut the number of directors and chief executives. When you factor in pension contributions, many senior council officers are costing taxpayers in excess of £200K a year

To give you some examples from our Town Hall Rich List this year, the chief executive’s remuneration package in Liverpool was worth £278K, with two directors costing over £240K,  another costing £212K, not to mention the many other officers on six-figure packages. In the Wirral (one of the Merseyside councils looking at merging services) the chief executive and seven directors all earn six-figure salaries.

There is still scope for many more savings in councils throughout the country. I am pleased many councils are merging, or are considering merging services. More councils need to do this, and reduce the number of senior officers in the process.

 

I’m alright, Jackie!

Jun 3rd, 2011
by Colin Cameron.
Comments are off for this post

Prepare to enter (not for the first time, I hear you say) the bonkers world of public sector “business” models and remuneration policies.

In 2010, the Chief Executive of Newcastle College Group, Jackie Fisher, received an eye-watering pay package of £293,764 at a time when the College knew it was likely to have its government funding reduced.  This package included a Performance Bonus of £18,698 plus a Retention Award or, to give it its proper title, Even More Bonus, of £54,090. The result of all this was that the Chief Executive’s pay rose by more than 57% in three years.

In addition to Ms Fisher, in 2009 42 employees of Newcastle College Group earned more than £60,000 with an average of £88,528. This might also be a good point to consider the associated pension liabilities for this group who are presumably all on final salary schemes. The College’s Chair of Governors, Jamie Martin, justified Ms Fisher’s mammoth pay by saying: “Retaining committed and able people in the organisation has been crucial to our success at Newcastle College Group”

In early 2011, current financial reality finally caught up with the education sector and Newcastle College duly had its funding cut. It responded by axing 171 jobs, Ms Fisher commenting: “We are very disappointed by the planned reductions to education funding.”

So this “successful” organisation, with a Chief Executive on a salary which would grace the private sector, was completely unable to withstand a cut in government funding without getting rid of large numbers of staff, all paid a hell of a lot less than the fortunate few at the top.

We recently submitted a Freedom of Information request to Newcastle College which included the question: “If Ms Fisher is entitled to a bonus payment under the terms of her contract of employment, has Ms Fisher been asked at any stage by the College’s Directors or Governors to forego any or all of her bonus payment?”

The bizarre answer this question prompted is worth reproducing in full: “Any bonuses awarded to Dame Jackie Fisher are not contractual and recognise Dame Jackie’s exceptional performance. Dame Jackie has not been asked to forgo (sic) a bonus payment as it is not in her power to do so as it is not contractual. “

So, putting aside the fact that the second sentence doesn’t make sense, I think we get their drift . Basically, because the bonus is not in Ms Fisher’s contract, she can’t refuse to take it, although presumably the Governors could have decided that under the current financial circumstances they wouldn’t offer her one?

David Cameron has gone on record as saying “Basically we have a choice. We either have pay restraint or we are going to lose jobs.”

In the case of the top brass at Newcastle College, lack of pay restraint means the loss of other people’s jobs!

 

BBC One’s The Street That Cut Everything taught us nothing

May 17th, 2011
by Chris Daniel.
Comments are off for this post

Last night the BBC aired The Street That Cut Everything, a reality television show. Nick Robinson opened the show proclaiming: “Welcome to an extraordinary experiment. The people living here are going to have to do a whole lot more for themselves and get used to having have a lot less done for them. Asking the people on this street to do without something we all take for granted – council services. Everything the council provides is going. “

The crux of the experiment was seeing how an ordinary street manages when all council services are removed. They are all given their pro-rata council tax contribution and are given freedom how to spend it. The 52 Residents had to decide if they were to work together or as individual households.

Residents of ‘The street’ were put through a series of challenges, from losing street lighting, removal of their wheelie bins and waste collections, fly tipping, graffiti, housing benefit, closure of parks, leisure centres and loss of council buses

The 'scientist': Nick Robinson

The residents took recycling to the local supermarket. Only to find it returned to them because the supermarket bins are also emptied by the council. They eventually took their waste to a private recycling plant and were paid £15 for it.

Whilst the theatrical show made for sensationalist television the concept was completely flawed.  It bore little relation to the actual challenge people would face without council services for three reasons.

First, it compared large-scale long-term council provision and planning with an attempt to manage without on a small-scale, for only 6 weeks. Many of the services residents used on a regular basis are administered by a council with an established infrastructure. If the council ceased to exist then a private organisation would inevitably move to fill the void. Anton Howes on the Adam Smith Institute’s blog makes this point:

“If private money could have been used to replace services, any entrepreneur in the area would have jumped at the chance to make a profit providing lighting, or collecting rubbish. But then six weeks for just a handful of households is not enough to merit that kind of endeavour. Instead of rationing public services within strict limits, a whole service industry involving growth and increasing productivity could have been created, particularly if done on a larger, longer-term scale.”

The second reason is it focussed on the frontline services residents receive. What it failed to highlight was other vast examples of waste that councils could cut tomorrow and save millions of pounds.

One resident hit the nail on the head. “No wonder the council is short of money, there seems to be a service for everything. If they cut a few of the services, I think people would manage and survive off their own devices. One daft rule of the experiment was that residents were not permitted to use any of their own money, even to buy a torch to light the streets when on the way to work, surely that is unrealistic and made it harder to deal with the withdrawal of services.

Finally, it is unclear where the figure of £52.90 the residents receive comes from. The money residents pay in council tax only makes up a proportion of local government revenue. Preston City Council have three sources of funding: £7.34 million in Central Government Grants; £10.17 million from council taxpayers and £12.92 million from non-domestic rate payers, it is not clear if the share residents received back takes this into account. Furthermore, does the figure include both the money paid to Preston City and Lancashire County councils?

A valid comparison?

One of the most controversial moments during the six weeks was when residents were told that out of their budget they had to pay for the care of the father of one of “the street’s” residents. Following a majority vote, they voted to provide the care. It would have been contentious not to, and following the emotional plea by his daughter, heartless. But it would be logical for the street’s residents to also receive the father’s share of council tax, it they were expected to pay for his care. This was wholly unfair and ate up a not insignificant £300 of their already diminishing budget.

But even leaving aside the flaws in the application of the programme’s concept.  The concept itself bore little relation to the actual challenge for councils.  They don’t need to respond to cuts by dropping services, let alone all of them, but should instead be looking to emulate other authorities that have shown it is possible to get better value.

Thankfully the programme did not consist entirely of residents cheerleading services provided by their council. The tight financial circumstances did prompt some residents to search for examples of waste within their authority. One resident discovered Lancashire County Council spent £29,000 to change their logo. His response “£29,000?  That’d pay for a lot of care!”. Perhaps the most useful outcome of the programme was that it provoked some residents to start realising there were areas of spending the council poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into with no direct benefit to residents. When councils threaten to remove provision of elderly care and closure of public parks and school buses, residents will realise the council needs to sort out their priorities. When challenged the residents seemed to take more of an interest in where the council spend their money.

Following an event we ran at Conservative Party Conference, the BBC published an article about some of the ways councils can save money, with cost cutting tips from the successful council leaders we invited. It is a shame measures like those weren’t given more publicity in last night’s documentary. The programme was more of a propaganda campaign against council cuts, when it could have asked more serious questions and investigated, for example, why Wandsworth Council is able to spend the best part of a third less than neighbouring Lambeth Council and generally get better marks for its services.  A lot of that is down to running a lot more efficiently.

Interestingly when residents realised their pot was empty, they prioritised. They chose to take down their hired street lights in order to claw money back to enable them to have their waste collected. Councils need to prioritise now but that shouldn’t mean giving taxpayers a worse deal.   They should be making cuts in non-essential areas, reducing the bloated back office, slashing  fat-cat salaries and slimming down the enormous mass of middle managers.  How many of those residents would’ve rather seen a diversity officer in post over having their waste collected? How many would care if they existed at all if it meant a reduction in council tax?

An experiment like this will naturally have huge limitations, but these limitations are not an excuse for ignoring saving suggestions or for failing to acknowledge and remind audiences that only a proportion of council expenditure is on frontline services.

I struggle to see quite what the aim of the programme was supposed to be.  An experiment, and one set up unfairly, in how people would cope with short-term revolutionary anarcho-capitalism isn’t the right way of exploring how best councils can manage budget cuts.   There is only one really clear result: the people on the programme really valued being able to see what was happening to their money.  If all councils were transparent about their spending residents could come to a much more informed view about how to prioritise with their money.

Non-job of the week

May 11th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

Do you remember the Future Shape Programme Manager from North East Lincolnshire Council? If you haven’t heard about this non-job or would like reminding, take a look at this clip.
 

Many councils around the country have been following suit. I constantly see vacancies for change managers, and have highlighted many of them. Now Walsall Council is doing the same. This council is looking for a Smarter Workplaces Programme Manager – a nice variation on the same theme.

I wonder how long it took someone to think it up? Or was it a group decision, after senior officers went for an away day, thrashing out ideas they felt they couldn’t do in the office? Never mind, I’m sure Walsall Council will have a similar excuse as other councils have for employing someone on £66,067-£74,799.  Here’s the job description.

Walsall Council’s Smarter Workplace programme will deliver significant savings and cultural change through the modernisation of the council’s workplace and the implementation of the new council operating model. The programme manager will provide visionary and inspirational change leadership. Reporting to the Executive Director for Regeneration (the Senior Responsible Officer for the Smarter Workplaces Programme) you will lead, champion and deliver the Smarter Workplace strategy and proactively monitor its overall progress and ensure successful delivery.

I wish I had a pound for every time a council has said if it didn’t pay large salaries to senior staff, they would go elsewhere. We are told they are so valuable; have great multitasking skills; are fantastic organisers; and deliver low cost, efficient services. If this is so, why does Walsall Council need a Smarter Workplaces Programme Manager? Or is it trying to pull the wool over our eyes?

If you are a resident of Walsall, and would like to know why your council is spending £75K on this post, why not write to your councillor? You can also write a letter to your local newspaper. Do let me know what you response you get, and I will highlight it for the benefit of all our supporters.

Evidence continues to show the taxpayer picks up too big a bill for the public sector payroll

May 9th, 2011
by Charlotte Linacre.
Comments are off for this post

A study out today from Policy Exchange shows that public sector workers are better paid, and on average earn more for shorter hours. This study shows that the public sector ‘premium’ – the additional pay a typical public sector worker receives over a private sector worker – is now 35 per cent more calculated on hourly pay. Because those on salaries in the public sector tend to work shorter hours, for typical annual pay the premium is up to 16 per cent. Regular readers will know this is something we’ve blogged about for a number of years now, for example here, and our Public Sector and Town Hall Rich Lists have highlighted the huge growth of the number of executives on six-figure salaries and ludicrous pay hikes. Our Research Fellow Mike Denham has also written extensively on public sector pay on his blog.

While many workers in the private sector faced pay cuts in the recession, pay continued increasing in the public sector, ignoring the urgent and obvious need to better control costs. It’s totally at odds with the reality faced by the vast majority of private sector workers who can’t reach into that seemingly inexhaustible source of money – taxpayers’ pockets. It’s often said that public sector workers are more likely to be professional and have more qualifications, but that doesn’t explain this pay gap either.

A tale of two wallets

 

The report also talks about other superior benefits enjoyed by public sector workers, such as shorter hours, more holidays and better pensions. On top of the stats bearing these facts out, I’m sure everyone can relate to this anecdotally. I know several people who have worked for councils and admit to counting down the hours until their lunch break and then again until 5pm. There isn’t a desire to go the extra mile, or the push to from management. What’s more, there is barely any threat of being fired if you don’t pull your weight. It’s not simply down to these individuals being lazy either; they had so much potential and did go on to be engaged and productive for less money in the private sector. Of course there are many thousands of hard-working and talented workers in the public sector, but although it pays generously pay isn’t the defining factor in employee engagement and so good value for taxpayers. All of this contributes to lower productivity across the public sector, which dropped 0.3 per cent between 1998 and 2007: a period of record hikes in public spending. During the same period productivity in the private sector went up 2.3 per cent. As we’ve said before on these pages, Governments too often confuse taxpayers’ cash – or what politicians call “investment” – with commitment. Improving things doesn’t mean chucking a load of money at them and hoping some of it sticks.

Another report out recently, from PricewaterhouseCoopers, on absenteeism is also worth looking at. It shows the number of days taken off varies greatly by country and between those working in the public and private sector. The report has some interesting figures and also some conclusions on what impacts on the level of sickness. In the UK the average worker takes 10 days off a year because of sickness, this is comparable with Europe but dramatically higher than Asia-Pacific at 4.5 days and the US at 5.5 days. PwC commented that in the US there are shorter holidays and longer hours which you might expect to impact on stress and sickness rates, in fact it seems that motivation engagement and desire to be at work are actually bigger factors.

Absenteeism is costing the British economy £32 billion per year. And this disproportionately hits the taxpayer. As in similar recent revelations on council staff sickness, PwC found the average absenteeism rate is brought up by public sector workers who average 12.2 days a year compared to the lowest rates in technology companies at 7.6 days.

As I commented at the time: “It’s scandalous that yet more research confirms public sector staff are pulling more “sickies” than those in the private sector. Of course employers should be sympathetic to genuine illnesses but there seems to be a different approach when taxpayers’ pockets are raided to foot the bill. These findings also suggest that a lack of commitment will lead to more absenteeism, which means taxpayers are getting a bad deal twice, both by funding extra days off and picking up the tab for disengaged staff.”

The conclusion of Policy Exchange’s report comes up with three solutions: local pay-bargaining and an end to national strike ballots; replace the two-year pay freeze on individual salaries with a freeze in the total pay bill for public sector organisations; reforming public sector pensions. We’ve said before that local pay-bargaining should come to an end. It’s very destructive and in some cases in the NHS it can actually put patients at risk. The two year pay freeze was something we recommended in our book How to Cut Public Spending, and was subsequently implemented by the Government. Freezing the overall pay bill would have much the same effect fiscally, though it might be harder to enforce politically. We’ve discussed how we would reform public sector pensions at length, and the scale of the problem is not recognised by official debt figures either, so the report is right to flag this up as a pressing issue.

Public sector bodies must find savings and pay is usually their biggest expense. Having implemented a two year pay freeze, the Government have to look at longer term solutions to ensure that well these pay ‘premiums’ do not get back out of control.

Leeds pensioner fired for revealing the truth on senior pay

Mar 31st, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

Last year, when I campaigned against a £364K payment East Riding of Yorkshire Council was about to pay Sue Lockwood’s pension pot, I highlighted we would not have known about this payment if it hadn’t been for someone leaking the story to the Yorkshire Post. The council was determined to keep this story under wraps.

This month – in our non-job of the week feature - I have highlighted two London councils who are willing to pay six-figure sums for parking managers. We don’t know who these councils are, because they are using a recruitment agency. Once again we see councils hiding the truth from council taxpayers.

It’s the same old story in Leeds. We were contacted by Maurice Scott, a 79 year-old retired firefighter. He is the embodiment of the ‘Big Society’ in action, serving as an unpaid director for West North West Homes, one of three Arm’s Length Management Organisations (ALMOs) which run Leeds’ 50,000 Council homes on behalf of Leeds City Council. When he found out three senior employees were about to receive a pay rise – when other employees had had their pay frozen – he complained to the leader of the council and the chief whip. The result: he’s getting fired for a breach of confidence!

This is what Cllr Alison Lowe, chair of WNW Homes standards committee had to say in the Yorkshire Evening Post.

 “This is an internal matter and it is being dealt with appropriately according to policy. West North West Homes has transparent, open staffing policies which we would be pleased to share on request.”

If WNW Homes is a transparent organisation, why has it decided to fire Mr Scott?  Re-read my opening two paragraphs. We know councils are constantly trying to hide large pay packets and big payments, but as this is an arm’s-length limited company, there isn’t an obligation for WNW Homes to publish the individual salaries of senior staff. If you look at its accounts for 2009/10 all you will see is the total employee wage bill. For Cllr Lowe’s statement to have any validity, you would have to know three senior employees had received pay rises. The only way you would know is if you were a director, and if you communicate this information – even to the leader of the council – you face the sack.

I have spoken to Mr Scott, and he quite rightly feels he has done nothing wrong. He feels it is his duty to let the public know how their money is being spent. Naturally, we agree with him, and give him our full support.

Leeds pensioner fired for revealing the truth on senior pay

Mar 31st, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

Last year, when I campaigned against a £364K payment East Riding of Yorkshire Council was about to pay Sue Lockwood’s pension pot, I highlighted we would not have known about this payment if it hadn’t been for someone leaking the story to the Yorkshire Post. The council was determined to keep this story under wraps.

This month – in our non-job of the week feature - I have highlighted two London councils who are willing to pay six-figure sums for parking managers. We don’t know who these councils are, because they are using a recruitment agency. Once again we see councils hiding the truth from council taxpayers.

It’s the same old story in Leeds. We were contacted by Maurice Scott, a 79 year-old retired firefighter. He is the embodiment of the ‘Big Society’ in action, serving as an unpaid director for West North West Homes, one of three Arm’s Length Management Organisations (ALMOs) which run Leeds’ 50,000 Council homes on behalf of Leeds City Council. When he found out three senior employees were about to receive a pay rise – when other employees had had their pay frozen – he complained to the leader of the council and the chief whip. The result: he’s getting fired for a breach of confidence!

This is what Cllr Alison Lowe, chair of WNW Homes standards committee had to say in the Yorkshire Evening Post.

 “This is an internal matter and it is being dealt with appropriately according to policy. West North West Homes has transparent, open staffing policies which we would be pleased to share on request.”

If WNW Homes is a transparent organisation, why has it decided to fire Mr Scott?  Re-read my opening two paragraphs. We know councils are constantly trying to hide large pay packets and big payments, but as this is an arm’s-length limited company, there isn’t an obligation for WNW Homes to publish the individual salaries of senior staff. If you look at its accounts for 2009/10 all you will see is the total employee wage bill. For Cllr Lowe’s statement to have any validity, you would have to know three senior employees had received pay rises. The only way you would know is if you were a director, and if you communicate this information – even to the leader of the council – you face the sack.

I have spoken to Mr Scott, and he quite rightly feels he has done nothing wrong. He feels it is his duty to let the public know how their money is being spent. Naturally, we agree with him, and give him our full support.

Problems with new accounting regulations no excuse for poor FoI responses

Mar 30th, 2011
by Chris Daniel.
Comments are off for this post

Our annual Town Hall Rich List always manages to provoke a reaction, and this year’s was no exception. Data for the latest 2011 list was taken from councils’ 2009-10 statement of accounts, thanks to a very welcome change in the regulations. Previously, we compiled the information by sending freedom of information requests to all local authorities in the UK. We still had to send requests to councils in Scotland and Northern Ireland this time round as the new regulations do not apply to them.

The new regulations state that while councils should provide information for the respective employees in the year to which the annual accounts relate, “equivalent disclosure is required for the comparative year.” This means that councils should not only provide the most recent year’s figures, but also the one prior to that for the sake of comparison. It is worth noting that while the levels of disclosure varied (for example, some providing searchable pdfs, others providing scanned documents or poorly formatted ones) most councils met these standards with ease. But some didn’t.

Where councils did not provide comparable information for the 2008-09 financial year, we searched our Town Hall Rich List 2010 to fill in the gaps for that year. We did this because it is the most reliable information on senior salaries that has been published, as it was assembled through Freedom of Information requests. This caused confusion with Lincolnshire County council’s numbers. In response to our request last year they initially provided positions and salary bands of £10,000. We had to submit an official appeal through the council to get more information, as our request asked for total remuneration and names. They then provided names and bands of £5,000, still a little short of what we actually requested.

Lincolnshire County Hall

Lincolnshire Council disputed the figures for remuneration increase in this year’s report. This figure will be high in some columns if a person received an extraordinary redundancy payment, was in post for part year or if incomplete information was provided by the council. In Lincolnshire’s case it was the latter. However, we controlled for this. When working out the average remuneration increase across the board we only included those in post for the full two years; therefore excluding part year employees, those who retired or were made redundant. What’s more, the source for the 2008-09 figure was clearly stated in the notes column of the report. For Lincolnshire’s entry, this explained that the 2008-09 figure was taken from our last Rich List and was taken from a provided band.

This example highlights three important points. First it draws attention to the inconsistent and selective disclosure in the councils’ 2009-10 statements of accounts. The second is with councils’ inaccuracy or reluctance to respond fully to Freedom of Information requests. Third is that we had to appeal to Lincolnshire to get these figures, which they now say are wrong; this reluctance to be open and transparent last year has clearly not helped. True, they now publish pay online, and with good detail, but this is not retrospective. Lincolnshire provided us with both figures, through FoI and through their own accounts, and this was the most detailed publicly available information.

Our Campaign Manager Charlotte went on the radio to talk about the THRL with a councillor from Lincolnshire County council. Rather than discussing the issues at hand, the councillor just focussed on the “wrong” figures. Of course, Charlotte was quick to point out to him that they were the council’s very own figures. If they’re wrong, then Lincolnshire have provided the wrong figures. It is so disappointing that taxpayers in Lincolnshire were denied genuine debate about savings at the council. Staff and councillors at Lincolnshire should check our sources, then their own accounts and FoI responses.

My response to the leader of Hull City Council

Mar 21st, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

The publication of our annual “Town Hall Rich List” always manages to ruffle a few feathers. Matthew Sinclair wrote about this last Thursday, and I was accused of presenting misleading information too. I always find this amusing, as the figures we quote come directly from councils’ accounts and from Freedom of Information requests. Are some councils trying to say their own figures are misleading and incorrect? Or is perhaps they don’t want their electorate (bearing in mind many councillors are seeking re-election in May) to know the truth?

Last Thursday, I was interviewed on BBC Radio Humberside. All four councils in the Radio Humberside area declined to come on air and make their case, although North Lincolnshire Council did make a statement accusing us of ‘tarring all councils with the same brush.’ Once again, all we have to go on is the information publicly available in North Lincolnshire Council’s accounts, and the information they give us through the Freedom of Information Act. This is something I reminded listeners of.

As a result of my interview, the leader of Hull City Council, Carl Minns, decided he was going to take to the airwaves and attempt to rebut by complaints. As I have not been given the opportunity to publicly answer the points he made, I will do so here. I did have a meeting with Cllr Minns later in the day, and cleared up some points, although – naturally – the public is not aware of this, and have been left with the impression what he said on air was correct. Here are a few points he raised listed in bullet points, with my reply beneath each one.

  • The TPA has double counted posts and called redundancy payments a pay rise.

Not true. We included all those people with incomes above £100K a year (including pension contributions). Yes, if some posts were vacated and filled by someone else mid-year, it is possible for a job to be counted twice. The important thing to remember is two different people who were doing that job each received remuneration above £100K. We also did not call redundancy payments a ‘pay rise’. We made it clear this was remuneration. After the £364K payment to Sue Lockwood in the East Riding of Yorkshire Council last year, it is important we know how much of our money is paid to individual officers.

  • In all fairness to the TaxPayers’ Alliance, they do put that information (regarding redundancy payments) in the small print, but it wasn’t said on the show today, and it won’t be said by the national TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Again, not true. There isn’t any small print. It is displayed in the same font size and all the information can be read easily in the same column. We are not trying to hide anything.

  • Andrew has been on this show and congratulated the council for cutting the wage bill and the number of senior posts

This is true and I made that point during the interview. My criticism of the council was that some of those senior employees still in post were receiving pay rises.

  • Andrew Allison says it’s in the accounts. I urge every listener to go to the council website – hullcc.gov.uk. This information is publicly available.

Cllr Minns should have checked his own council’s website before he went on air. If he had he would have found pay rises for the Chief Executive of (the now defunct) Hull Forward, the Director of Building Schools for the Future, the Head of Finance, amongst others. (This information can be found on pages 32-33 using this link). Yes, there has been much restructuring done, and this has brought down the overall cost of senior pay, but while lower paid workers have not seen their pay increase, some (not all) senior officers have seen their pay increase. As I said in the interview, how can anyone say to the public we are going to cut your services; say to their staff you’re not going to get a pay rise, and at the same time  get a pay rise themselves?

  • The pension scheme is decided nationally.

While this is true, it is also true that Hull City Council pays around 25% in employer pension contributions, with the East Riding Council paying just over half of that figure, with all money being invested in the East Riding Pension Scheme. Hull taxpayers are paying hundreds of millions of pounds more than their East Riding counterparts mainly due to Hull City Council approving unaffordable early retirements in the past. One of the arguments of such a generous pension scheme in the public sector is public servants are paid less than their private sector counterparts. Then we hear that senior council officers should be paid high salaries to stop them joining the private sector. Like millions of people, I fund my pension through my own income. No-one tops-up my pension to the tune of thousands of pounds a year. This is a benefit that must be included when arriving at a figure for total remuneration.

It’s a pity Cllr Minns decided not to debate with me live on air. If he had done, we could have cleared up all the points he raised, however I find none of our local politicians are willing to come into the studio with me. Instead they get interviewed separately, or hide behind press releases. When councils do the right thing, or attempt to do the right thing, I will support them; as I have done on previous occasions, but when services are being cut, and some senior officers still receive pay rises and bonuses, the TPA will not remain silent.

My response to the leader of Hull City Council

Mar 21st, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

The publication of our annual “Town Hall Rich List” always manages to ruffle a few feathers. Matthew Sinclair wrote about this last Thursday, and I was accused of presenting misleading information too. I always find this amusing, as the figures we quote come directly from councils’ accounts and from Freedom of Information requests. Are some councils trying to say their own figures are misleading and incorrect? Or is perhaps they don’t want their electorate (bearing in mind many councillors are seeking re-election in May) to know the truth?

Last Thursday, I was interviewed on BBC Radio Humberside. All four councils in the Radio Humberside area declined to come on air and make their case, although North Lincolnshire Council did make a statement accusing us of ‘tarring all councils with the same brush.’ Once again, all we have to go on is the information publicly available in North Lincolnshire Council’s accounts, and the information they give us through the Freedom of Information Act. This is something I reminded listeners of.

As a result of my interview, the leader of Hull City Council, Carl Minns, decided he was going to take to the airwaves and attempt to rebut by complaints. As I have not been given the opportunity to publicly answer the points he made, I will do so here. I did have a meeting with Cllr Minns later in the day, and cleared up some points, although – naturally – the public is not aware of this, and have been left with the impression what he said on air was correct. Here are a few points he raised listed in bullet points, with my reply beneath each one.

  • The TPA has double counted posts and called redundancy payments a pay rise.

Not true. We included all those people with incomes above £100K a year (including pension contributions). Yes, if some posts were vacated and filled by someone else mid-year, it is possible for a job to be counted twice. The important thing to remember is two different people who were doing that job each received remuneration above £100K. We also did not call redundancy payments a ‘pay rise’. We made it clear this was remuneration. After the £364K payment to Sue Lockwood in the East Riding of Yorkshire Council last year, it is important we know how much of our money is paid to individual officers.

  • In all fairness to the TaxPayers’ Alliance, they do put that information (regarding redundancy payments) in the small print, but it wasn’t said on the show today, and it won’t be said by the national TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Again, not true. There isn’t any small print. It is displayed in the same font size and all the information can be read easily in the same column. We are not trying to hide anything.

  • Andrew has been on this show and congratulated the council for cutting the wage bill and the number of senior posts

This is true and I made that point during the interview. My criticism of the council was that some of those senior employees still in post were receiving pay rises.

  • Andrew Allison says it’s in the accounts. I urge every listener to go to the council website – hullcc.gov.uk. This information is publicly available.

Cllr Minns should have checked his own council’s website before he went on air. If he had he would have found pay rises for the Chief Executive of (the now defunct) Hull Forward, the Director of Building Schools for the Future, the Head of Finance, amongst others. (This information can be found on pages 32-33 using this link). Yes, there has been much restructuring done, and this has brought down the overall cost of senior pay, but while lower paid workers have not seen their pay increase, some (not all) senior officers have seen their pay increase. As I said in the interview, how can anyone say to the public we are going to cut your services; say to their staff you’re not going to get a pay rise, and at the same time  get a pay rise themselves?

  • The pension scheme is decided nationally.

While this is true, it is also true that Hull City Council pays around 25% in employer pension contributions, with the East Riding Council paying just over half of that figure, with all money being invested in the East Riding Pension Scheme. Hull taxpayers are paying hundreds of millions of pounds more than their East Riding counterparts mainly due to Hull City Council approving unaffordable early retirements in the past. One of the arguments of such a generous pension scheme in the public sector is public servants are paid less than their private sector counterparts. Then we hear that senior council officers should be paid high salaries to stop them joining the private sector. Like millions of people, I fund my pension through my own income. No-one tops-up my pension to the tune of thousands of pounds a year. This is a benefit that must be included when arriving at a figure for total remuneration.

It’s a pity Cllr Minns decided not to debate with me live on air. If he had done, we could have cleared up all the points he raised, however I find none of our local politicians are willing to come into the studio with me. Instead they get interviewed separately, or hide behind press releases. When councils do the right thing, or attempt to do the right thing, I will support them; as I have done on previous occasions, but when services are being cut, and some senior officers still receive pay rises and bonuses, the TPA will not remain silent.

Scout groups face closure thanks to council demands

Mar 18th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

The Scouting Movement, founded in 1907, is one of the UK’s most cherished organisations. I remember my time very fondly as a Scout. Songs around the camp fire; walking and climbing; learning how to tie knots. I’m sure I’m not the only reader who can recall days like these. Nationally, there are 7240 Scout groups, with approximately 110,000 adult helpers who give 37,600,000 hours per year to the community. When David Cameron talks about the ‘Big Society’, here are a group of people who have been doing it for years, giving children the opportunity to experience different aspects of life with their peers, rather than sat indoors playing computer games.

Unfortunately, they are seen as an easy target by some councils. In a recent press release, the Scout Association announced that Scout groups are being subjected to enormous rent increases by local authorities. Here are some examples.

  • Banstead District Scout Group has received a request for an increase in ground rent from the current £135 per annum to £10,500 from Reigate and Banstead District Council.
  • Barwick in Elmet Scout Group in Wetherby District (part of Leeds City Council) have used the local school for Scouting purposes for free for over 25 years. The group expect that rate to rise to £100 per week in 2011, increasing their costs by £5000 per year.
  • Leeds City Council has increased the fees for renting a building to the 12th Morley Scout Group and the group now needs to find an additional £6480 per year.  They anticipate that this will cost each child an additional £108 per year.  They anticipate that the group will fold by the end of the spring.

As a result of these increases, many Scout groups face closure. You would think councils would realise this, and when you take a look at our Town Hall Rich List published this week, you can also see those councils in the examples above have clearly got their priorities wrong.

  • In 2009/10, Reigate and Banstead District Council awarded its chief executive an 8.3% pay rise.
  • Leeds City Council awarded its Director of Children’s Services a 9.9% pay rise; its Director of Resources a 4.9% pay rise; and its Director of City Development a 4.8% pay rise.

In our manifesto, we called for the top 10% of earners in the public sector to take a 5% pay cut. Instead, too many big earners have seen their pay go up, and at the same time they tell voluntary organisations – like the Scouts – they have to tighten their belts and pay more. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’d bet my house that the public will side with the Scouts rather than council chiefs. Hopefully, these councils will get the message and realise what a brilliant job many voluntary organisations do in this country, and stop seeing them as an easy target.

Town Hall Rich List 2011

Mar 17th, 2011
by The TaxPayers' Alliance.
Comments are off for this post

The 2,295 council staff earning over £100k

Includes full breakdown for every local council

Click here to read the full report

The only comprehensive guide to top pay at UK local councils, with detailed breakdowns for each council included

Record 2,295 council staff earned over £100,000 in 2009-10 (up 18 per cent on 2008-09)

We proudly presents the fifth Town Hall Rich List, the ‘Who’s Who’ of local government fat cats, detailing all those whose remuneration exceeds £100,000.

Since the first Town Hall Rich List in 2007, the number of senior staff receiving such large sums has soared and the latest list shows that trend continuing. Executive pay in town halls across the UK has continued to be insulated from economic reality, despite the urgent need to find savings and many councils claiming they are being forced to cut services because they are getting less money from central government.

The Town Hall Rich List 2011 reveals the names, job titles and full remuneration of all local council employees earning over £100,000 for the financial year 2009-10. The full report can be read here and includes detailed breakdowns for each council.

Click here to see the full report

Click here for the press release

Key findings

  • There were 2,295 council employees receiving total remuneration in excess of £100,000 in 2009-10, an increase of 18 per cent on the previous year’s 1,941. This may partly be explained by a rise in the number receiving significant redundancy payments
  • 48 council employees received remuneration over £250,000 in 2009-10, up from 19 in 2008-09
  • 506 council employees received remuneration between £150,000 and £249,999 in 2009-10, up from 408 in 2008-09
  • The average total remuneration increase for staff in the Town Hall Rich list and in post for both full years from 2008-09 to 2009-10 was 3.8 per cent
  • The councils with the most employees in receipt of remuneration over £100,000 in 2009-10 were Cornwall and Newcastle upon Tyne , both with 32 taking the crown from Kent in the previous year, who this year report 31

Matthew Sinclair, Director of The TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“Councils should be scouring every inch of their expenditure to identify savings, so taxpayers will be staggered that so many council employees are still getting such a generous deal. Councils insist cuts can only mean pressure on frontline services but they clearly have money to spend when it comes to paying their own senior staff. It is crucial that some of these senior council executives set an example and ensure they have the moral authority to lead spending cuts by taking a pay cut themselves. Households have seen their Council Tax bills double over the last decade and deserve better value. Proper transparency is an essential first step so that residents can decide for themselves if town hall bosses are delivering the results to justify pay at these sorts of levels.”

£3.5 million paid to interim staff and consultants in Sheffield

Mar 10th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

As councils look to make savings in their budgets, the use of consultants is one area they should look at first. It has come to my attention that Sheffield City Council is currently spending £3.5 million in this area. Although I accept some outside assistance will be needed on an ad hoc basis, £3.5 million is far too much, especially when you look at what it is being spent on.

In our non-job of the week feature last week, I highlighted how a borough council in London plans to pay an Interim Head of Parking Services £600 a day. It seems Sheffield Council is also willing to pay excessively high rates of pay.

The Sheffield Star last week revealed how the Interim Director of the Customer First Programme didn’t put taxpayers first when they earned £131K for ten months work – the equivalent of £157K a year. The council’s development agency quango, Create Sheffield, paid £116K to an interim chief executive for just nine months work – the equivalent of £154K a year.

The council also paid £80K to a PR firm for an environmental campaign, and £74K to a consultant to advise them on rebuilding secondary schools. Nice work if you can get it although, as usual, hard pressed taxpayers are the ones who have to foot the bill.

I know Sheffield is not an isolated example. There are too many councils who are willing to pay eye-watering pay packets to interim staff, PR firms and consultants while at the same time complaining that the government is cutting grant money paid to them. The leader of Sheffield City Council says he has already cut 30% off the consultants bill, and plans to reduce it by a further £1 million next year. This begs the question: if he can reduce spending by £1million next year, why hasn’t he done so already? Sheffield Council must try harder.

Advantage West Midlands

Mar 4th, 2011
by Jago Pearson.
Comments are off for this post

Some stories relating to public sector waste in recent years have been been hard to believe. However, this one takes the biscuit.

It involves the RDA, Advantage West Midlands, which is due to be scrapped in 2012. Despite this, it seems it continues to fritter away taxpayers’ money with only its own interests at heart. This particular story has a few different strands, so I suggest that you buckle in tight.

First of all, it emerged last year that the boss, Mick Laverty, received a bonus of £21,000 on top of his salary, which surpassed that of the Prime Minister’s. In total, there are four directors on a six-figure salary, with twenty-seven other senior staff receiving between £61,000 and £85,000 per year. In fact, only one such individual took voluntary redundancy in response to a widespread call to preserve valuable public money at the same time as they were asking their lower-end staff ‘to show restraint’. We may just have found one of the reasons why.

When you log on to the AWM website, you are greeted with a picture of Mr Laverty and his colleagues collecting a prize at the Midlands Excellence Awards 2011. This is particularly interesting. In the words of Midlands Excellence themselves, the awards are “open to private, public and voluntary organisations of all sizes” and provide “a rigorous and cost-effective assessment of performance in nine key areas ranging from customer satisfaction to people management, leadership, processes and impact on society.” Winning an award such as this would, at first sight, seem to be an excellent indication of the supposed exceptional work carried out by the RDA. Unfortunately, things are a little more complicated than that.

Midlands Excellence has a Board of Trustees comprising 5 people, plus a Chairman. One of these five is none other than Mick Laverty himself.  So hang on one minute: the CEO of AWM, which applauds itself for winning this esteemed award, is on the Board of Trustees of the organisation that gave it them? Yes, but it gets worse.

How it works. We think...

To enter the awards, you have to pay a fee, amounting to a value in excess of £1,000 in AWM’s case. But, as our research into RDA grants revealed, Midlands Excellence are already recipients of funding from Advantage West Midlands – over £400,000 between 2007 and 2009. Taxpayers’ money, allocated to AWM by the Government, was paid to an organisation that later commended AWM for its ‘excellence’. It really does beggar belief.

The idea is that receiving an award like the one from Midlands Excellence makes the RDA look good, but most importantly makes its directors look good, all of whom will of course be looking for a job come next year. Undoubtedly, they see this as an excellent addition to their CV, and they have said that themselves in the minutes of a board meeting in July 2010!

Note: A keen-eyed supporter alerts us that AWM have removed their July 2010 minutes from their website – so we’ve included a copy below:

Town Hall largesse in Hartlepool

Mar 3rd, 2011
by Colin Cameron.
Comments are off for this post

Just when you thought that the UK’s legion of self-regarding local authority bosses might have learned some lessons from an avalanche of negative publicity comes evidence that at least some of them have learned no lessons at all!

Paul Walker, the Chief Executive of Hartlepool Borough Council, has managed to alienate almost everybody in the town, including his own otherwise-supportive MP, by his response to the furore surrounding his recent salary increase of nearly £11,000. This took his salary to £168,000 a year or, to put it into context, £26,000 a year more than the Prime Minister in a town with a population of only 100,000 people!

Hartlepool, the 23rd most deprived borough in England, is making 86 council workers redundant, cutting services and slashing £20 million from its budgets over the next four years as it gets to grips with funding cuts. And yet the council’s Cabinet, for reasons best-known to itself, decided to increase Mr Walker’s salary, prompting an outcry from local residents, the town’s newspaper and the Parliamentary Under Secretary for State for Communities and Local Government, Robert Neill.

When Hartlepool’s MP, Iain Wright, wrote to Mr Walker asking him to forego the pay rise, he was so outraged by the “unrepentant and defiant response” he received that he raised the matter in the House of Commons, asking: “What can the Secretary of State do to curb such an arrogant sense of entitlement from some senior executives in local government with regard to pay?”

Hartlepool, you may recall, is the town which elected H’Angus The Monkey as Mayor a few years ago after he ran on a policy of distributing free bananas to local schoolchildren. The aforementioned H’Angus, aka Mayor Stuart Drummond, is still in post, pulling down a salary in excess of £60k a year, with the result that the hard-pressed taxpayers of this small town on the north east coast are shelling out nearly a quarter of a million quid a year for just two of its civic leaders. Apart from count their dosh and distribute free bananas, what on earth do they both do?

And to put it in a wider, and worrying, context, Mr Walker is one of FIVE local authority Chief Executives in the Tees Valley region who all earn more than our Prime Minister. The others are Middlesbrough, (which also has a Mayor), Redcar & Cleveland, Stockton on Tees and Darlington. Perhaps it’s time to revisit the idea of a single unitary authority for this region, as has been done in nearby Northumberland where a number of district councils have been successfully subsumed into one unitary authority, Northumberland County Council?

Credit where credit’s due, though. Hartlepool’s MP, Iain Wright, seems to be one of that small group of clear-sighted Labour MPs who recognise that overpaid and self-aggrandizing public servants do not support, defend or contribute to local services, but instead help to destroy them by having vital public funds diverted into their own pay and pension pots.

However, if there is some good news to come out of all of this, it is that Hartlepool Council appears to have saved some cash by abolishing its own Public Relations department, since clearly no self-respecting PR department would have allowed their Chief Executive to respond to this matter in such a cack-handed and insensitive manner. Would they?

In his letter to MP Iain Wright, Mr Walker commented that “mob rule seems to be the order of the day”. It’s not called mob rule Paul, it’s called democracy!

Non-job of the week

Mar 2nd, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
Comments are off for this post

No so much a non-job this week, but an egregious example of an obscene salary that has stunned us. This was brought to my attention yesterday morning, and at the same time independently aroused the interest of the Daily Express and The Spectator Coffee House Blog.

An unnamed London borough (and we have tried in vain to find out which one) is advertising for an Interim Head of Parking Services. When I first looked at it I wondered why the job was being advertised. Surely there must be someone in the council who can rise to the challenge for a few months before a permanent replacement can be found? This would be the most cost effective solution to the problem. Not that cost effectiveness is in the lexicon for many councils, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Then my eyes scanned down to the salary for this post. If you think you are up to it, you can earn an amazing £500 – £600 a day in this temporary post. If this salary is annualised, that’s the equivalent of  £130,000 – £156,000 a year! All of this for being in charge of parking wardens.

The prime minister earns £142,500 a year. How can the head of parking in a London borough be paid (based on £600 a day) more than David Cameron? It brings town hall largesse up to a different level.

We are constantly being told councils are forced to cut essential services because the government is cutting grant money to them. We have highlighted an example from Lambeth where the council has displayed posters saying  just that, and also increased the amount residents pay for parking permits by 700%. We have heard some councils are axing school crossing patrols to save money, even though they are not contemplating a reduction in senior officers’ pay. Now a London borough – which seems determined to keeps its identity secret, probably by signing a confidentiality agreement with the recruitment agency - thinks during a time of reducing costs, it is appropriate to pay its head of parking services £600 a day!

When we find out which council this is (and we will) we will ‘name and shame’ it, and if any readers can help us, please get in touch. Councils deliberately hiding their identity when recruiting staff are treating taxpayers with contempt.

UPDATE: We found out earlier today this job has been removed from the Guardian’s jobs website and from Morgan Hunt’s website too. Fortunately, we have taken screenshots, and they can be found below. The job is either about to be filled, or they have been embarrassed by the negative publicity. Perhaps this will act as a warning to other councils who try to hide excessively paid jobs from council taxpayers.

The websites:

CV Library Guardian Jobs Morgan Hunt
← Earlier Posts

Switch to our mobile site