COUNCILS DEFEND 'FAT CAT' PAYMENT FIGURES UP 13%

First Published by: Burton Mail

COUNCILS have defended their top executives’ pay after they appeared in a list of ‘local government fat cats’ produced by a low-taxation pressure group.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) claimed executive pay in UK town halls was ‘isolated from economic reality’ but the figures in its annual Town Hall Rich List were questioned by councils in the Mail’s circulation area and a union chief. 

Matthew Elliott, TPA chief executive, said: “Taxpayers will be astonished so many council employees are still getting such a generous deal while everyone else in the public sector is facing a pay freeze. “Council executives must ensure they have the moral authority to lead necessary spending cuts and in many cases that will mean taking a pay cut themselves.”

East Staffordshire Borough Council chief executive Andy O’Brien was among 658 council employees across the UK to have received remunerations of between £150,000 and £249,999 in the 2010-11 financial year, the last for which figures are available.

But the figure of £151,439, a 17.82 per cent increase from the £128,535 he received in 2009-10, included £15,551 ‘relocation expenses’ to fund his family’s move to the area, a sum which has previously been disclosed. Julia Jessel, the council’s deputy leader, said the TPA figures failed to state that the authority had ‘deleted’ six chief officer positions following a departmental restructure in October 2010, which would save £2.5 million during the current Parliament. 

She said: “This and other efficiency savings have allowed the council to freeze and reduce Council Tax over the last three years.” South Derbyshire District Council, whose chief executive, Frank McArdle, received £133,835 in salary, fees and allowances and pension contributions, disputed figures which appeared to show increases in the cash received by its senior officers.

A spokesman for the authority said the figures in the TPA document related to ‘the creation of a radically reduced management structure’ in April last year when 12 senior posts were reduced to six, saving £2.2 million over five years, while it was ‘not known’ where TPA figures citing unnamed directors — who received £112,500 and £122,500 — had been produced from.

A North West Leicestershire District Council spokesman said the 2.45 per cent increase in remunerations for its chief executive, Christine Fisher, who received £145,856, was accounted for by additional payments she received in her role as returning officer during last year’s elections, and that all its staff were subject to a pay freeze.

Meanwhile, its former head of street management’s 69 per cent increase in payments was due to redundancy costs due to the post being axed as part of a review of its senior management structure, which saw it make savings of £470,000. 

Ravi Subramanian, West Midlands regional secretary for the public sector union Unison, said the Taxpayers’ Alliance had taken ‘a far too simplistic look at a complex issue’ and that councils had to pay the going rate to attract ‘the best calibre’ of senior officers.

READ WHAT: ERIC PICKLES ‘SECRETARY OF STATE’ SAYS ABOUT OVER-CHARGED COUNCIL TAX.

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