Union concern over council bosses' pay
The man in charge of Bath and North East Somerset Council is the third best paid local authority chief executive in the south west, according to a union survey.
B&NES chief executive John Everitt’s pay package added up to more than £211,000 last year – putting him third behind his counterparts at Cornwall County and Bristol City councils.
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The GMB union – which represents thousands of lower paid council workers – has criticised the size of town hall bosses’ pay packets.
It looked at published accounts for 151 county councils, London and metropolitan authorities and found that 129 chief executives were paid more than £150,000 a year.
Its report said that two chief executives earned more than £300,000, 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.
GMB regional secretary Richard Ascough 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.”
Mr Ascough added: “There has to be restraint at the top combined with fairness at the bottom and there is no point having one without the other.”
Local government minister Bob Neill agreed that the issue was a concern, and said more councils needed to share chief executives.
He said: “Councils need to be leading from the front and exercising prudence in these difficult times.
“We need to stamp out a culture of duplication, which is why, in many cases, councils should be looking towards sharing chief executives.”
B&NES is to commission expert advice on the future of the chief executive’s role, with Mr Everitt able to exercise his right to retire from the job he has occupied since 1997 in a year’s time.
Mr Everitt – who is in charge of an authority employing nearly 7,000 people – was paid a basic £164,963 last year, the same as in 2008/9. His total remuneration package including pension contributions and expenses – of which he claimed £1,406 – takes the figure to £211,859.
John Ransford, chief executive of the Local Government Association, defended the size of local authority bosses’ salaries: “Chief executives are responsible for multi-million pound budgets in highly complex organisations, and councils are determined to attract the best and brightest people to deliver not only value for money, but the highest standards of public services.
“It is right that chief executive pay is subject to public scrutiny.
“Councils need talented people in top management positions and in deciding salary levels they have to balance this with other policy objectives, including the need, in a tight financial situation, for all salaries to be demonstrably reasonable.”
The GMB said it was awaiting figures for Wiltshire Council, whose chief executive Andrew Kerr started work only this February.
9 Comments
by Happy days, MSN
Friday, September 03 2010, 4:06PM
“This is why the BANES council have to dream up ways of keeping the money rolling in to pay their top heavy admin staff.
Just as a matter of interest how much do the GMB union pay their CEO and also what expenses is he allowed to claim including subsidised property.?”
by C, Bath
Friday, September 03 2010, 4:03PM
“Has anyone noticed Malcolm Hanney has been really quiet recently? Maybe he's on holiday or maybe he's realised there is no credible defence BANES can offer.”
by C, Bath
Friday, September 03 2010, 2:02PM
“This is just the Chief Exec ¿ what about the Strategic directors of which there 5, below them we have Divisional Directors of which there are 16. Below that there is a layer of Group Directors numbers of which they don¿t have on their main page but as an example in Planning there are 2 below the Divisional Director.
B&NES has an army over overpaid managers while front line staff get sh*fted.
And they tell us they need to get consultants in because they haven¿t possibly got the expertise to deal with certain issues. If that¿s the case then what are all these managers doing?
I have never known such a top heavy public sector management structure ¿ you¿ve probably got a director emptying your bins there are so many of them!”
by C, Bath
Friday, September 03 2010, 1:58PM
“This is just the Chief Exec ¿ what about the Strategic directors of which there 5, below them we have Divisional Directors of which there are 16.
Below that there is a layer of Group Directors numbers of which they don¿t have on their main page but as an example in Planning there are 2 below the Divisional Director.
B&NES has an army over overpaid managers while front line staff get sh*fted.
And they tell us they need to get consultants in because they haven¿t possibly got the expertise to deal with certain issues. If that¿s the case then what are all these managers doing?
I have never known such a top heavy public sector management structure ¿ you¿ve probably got a director emptying your bins there are so many of them!”
by Jaclyn Horrod, Keynsham
Friday, September 03 2010, 12:14PM
“I am sure the Chief Executive will announce he is slashing his pay by half knowing how many are being redundant in the name of savings - after all, Cameron led the way, surely this example will be followed? I am tired of hearing about efficiency savings and hard choices when those on the highest salaries are not struggling to pay their bills and facing the loss of a job, income and possibly their homes.
It is time these people said hello to reality.”
by Dave, Weston
Friday, September 03 2010, 10:23AM
“To an extent these salaries would start to be justifiable if these officials actually took responsibility for anything - they don't. Any time anything hard comes along they instantly reach for a consultant to tell them what to do. I have said numerous times that either we need a highly paid person with a wide range of expertise to make these decisions, or we need to buy in expertise in each individual area on a piecemeal consultancy basis, with a lower paid internal management simply to co-ordinate this.
The problem with the current set up is that firstly we are paying double for having both running, and secondly the reliance on consultants means that no-one ends up being held accountable when we get daft outcomes like bus lanes to no-where.”
by SH, BATH
Friday, September 03 2010, 10:20AM
“What EXACTLY does this overpaid CE do (when he's not outside having a fag) for the money he gets and what has he successfully achieved during his time at BANES apart from gather up a nice pension pot.”
by Gary P, Bath
Friday, September 03 2010, 9:35AM
“I agree Walter.
The idea that "councils are determined to attract the best and brightest people to deliver not only value for money, but the highest standards of public services" is commendable.
Unfortunately B&NES are failing to achieve these goals under the £211,000 a year leader, as illustrated by the recent commencement of unauthorised Wellsway bus lane work, and a leadership with a growing reputation for not engaging or listening to their electorate.”
by Walter McCabe, Freshford UK
Friday, September 03 2010, 9:03AM
“B&NES chief executive John Everitt¿s pay package is repeated many times up and down the country! One can only take a small smidgen of hope from imagining what his deduction boxes look like on the old payslip, those deductions themselves being enough to satisfy most of us salary wise. Based on the performance of most Local Councils these days we can but suggest that it is a fallacy that to attract the top kind of management we need to overpay them, I would imagine there are hundreds of recent graduates who could perform more than adequately at a third of the cost to US!”