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129 Council Chief Executives In England Paid More Than £150,000 In 2009-10 New GMB Study Shows

Posted on Thursday, September 02, 2010

As council chief executives are made expensively redundant one day and pop up in another job the next it is no wonder that the top council jobs are being seen as the best of all gravy trains says GMB

A new study of the most recent published accounts of local councils by GMB, the public services union, shows that 129 council Chief Executives in England were paid more than £150,000 per year in 2009/10. The ten highest paid council chief executives in 2009/10 in England are set out in the table below with qualifying notes in notes to Editors below.

For the study GMB examined the most recent published accounts for 2009/10 for 151 County councils, unitary authorities, London and metropolitan boroughs in England. The study shows that 2 Chief Executives earned over £300,000 but this includes the Cumbria County Council chief executive who got £351,169 in pension contributions. 14 earned between £250,000 and £300,000, 62 earned between £200,000 and £250,000 and  51 earned between £150,000 and £200,000. 19 had earnings below £150,000 but these figures are often qualified. GMB is awaiting figures for Wiltshire and Nottingham City. The figures for councils in each regions are set out in regional releases set out as pdfs at the foot of this national release.

Top 10 highest paid Chief Executives in England

Brian Strutton GMB National Secretary for Public Services said, “Council workers will be sickened to learn how much their bosses are creaming off and the levels of their bosses pay.  This is at a time when councils say they are hard up and are slashing jobs and services while telling staff to put up with a pay freeze. These same chief executives have had the gall to say their lowest paid workers will not get any pay rise this year.

I can’t believe that the council chief executives salaries have got so high with no obvious logic to explain this. You have to ask what our elected councillors are doing, voting through such obscene remuneration packages. Maybe the reported 20% increases in councillors pay in recent years has got something to do with it. It could be a case of all snouts in the trough together.

When you add the ever growing number of council chief executives being made expensively redundant one day and popping up in another job the next, it’s no wonder that the top council jobs are being seen as the best of all gravy trains.

To GMB members the real point is the difference between how those at the top treat themselves compared to what they impose on those on the front line. There are good chief executives who deserve a decent salary for running multi-billion pound authorities but there are also hundreds of thousands of care assistants, school dinner ladies, refuse staff, social workers, classroom assistants, and street cleaners who also deserve decent pay, not the pittance they are on. There has to be restraint at the top combined with fairness at the bottom and there is no point having one without the other.”

from www.gmb.org.uk