Record number of council staff paid over £100,000 a year

The analysis from the TaxPayers’ Alliance showed the number of council workers receiving more than the Prime Minister last year jumped by 10 per cent.

The alliance found that more than 3,000 senior council executives pocketed pay and perks packages in excess of £100,000 in its annual town hall rich list.

In all 3,097 town hall employees were awarded deals worth six figure sums in 2010-11, a hike of 13 per cent on the previous year. The figure is a record for the six years that the list has been compiled.

The alliance also found that 880 received in total more than the Prime Minister’s £142,500 salary, up 13 per cent from 777 in the year before. It also found 658 staff took home between £150,000 and £249,999, while 52 broke the £250,000 mark.

The alliance said some of the packages included redundancy payments but insisted that did not “wholly account” for the increase in high payouts.

The council employee with the largest remuneration package in the UK was Ian Drummond, executive director of special projects who received £450,628, including £109,000 for “compensation for loss of office” during the year and £199,000 in pension contributions.

Top of the Rich List when redundancy packages were excluded was Geoff Alltimes, then chief executive of Hammersmith and Fulham Council on £281,666.

Mr Alltimes no longer works for the council, which now shares the position of chief executive with another London council.

According to the study, the local authority with the most employees receiving more than £100,000 in 2010-11 was Barnet at 47 - something the council immediately claimed was untrue.

The report found Glasgow City Council had 25 members of staff with packages over £100,000, Cardiff City Council recorded 19 while Belfast City Council had just one.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TPA, said: “Taxpayers will be astonished that so many council employees are still getting such a generous deal while everyone else in the public sector is facing a pay freeze.

“The Town Hall Rich List shows that while councils insist cuts can only mean pressure on frontline services, some clearly have cash in the bank when it comes to paying their own senior staff.”

Top of the Rich List when redundancy packages were excluded was Geoff Alltimes, then chief executive of Hammersmith and Fulham Council on £281,666.

Mr Alltimes no longer works for the council, which now shares the position of chief executive with another London council.

A Barnet Council spokesman said: “The number is wrong. The Taxpayers' Alliance is cross referencing two lists that don't contain the same information. The council had 25 staff, including interim staff, on total remuneration over £100,000.

“A further 16 appear on the list because of redundancy payments and another six are teaching staff. This number of teaching staff also includes redundancies.”

A Glasgow City Council spokesman said Mr Drummond had since left the council. A spokesman: “With local government facing unprecedented cuts, we simply cannot sustain the number of staff we once had.

“If the Taxpayers' Alliance was genuinely interested in public finances, it would realise that these are not simply normal salary costs - they include a redundancy deal that will save the public purse £45 million every single year.”

A Hammersmith and Fulham Council spokesman said its pursuit of value for money was “relentless” and sharing a chief executive with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea was saving taxpayers £200,000 a year.

Government sources said most of the pay deals were agreed before the Coalition came into power, and ministers were trying to bear down on town hall pay.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said: “It proves there is significant scope to save taxpayers’ money by tackling the culture of dodgy pay deals and boomerang bosses that was the norm under Labour.”

The alliance said it based its report on local authorities' 2010-11 annual statement of accounts and where salary bands were provided it used the midpoint.

Table note: 2010-11 remuneration is not limited to salary and also includes fees, allowances, expenses, compensation, employer pension contributions, election duties, benefits in kind, redundancy payments and other payments.