Tuesday 10 November 2015

Cuts ? What Cuts?.Fat Cats in Town Halls

I'm no fan of th TaxPayers’ Alliance. but I cannot ignore the figures they have obtained that  show Welsh councils have 195 staff earning over £100,000 a year,.

A further 22 staff earn over £150,000, two over £200,000 and the pay package for one (the former chief executive of Gwynedd council, Harry Thomas) was over £300,000.

I'm no fan of the The Wasting Mule either but they have at least enlightened us with the Welsh figures.Which could have been lost in the UK numbers.




Some of the pay packages may be outdated as the person named has moved on

The 22 Welsh council figures earnings more than £150,000

Gwynedd (former) chief executive Harry Thomas £306,813
Pembrokeshire (former) chief executive and retuning officer Bryn Parry Jones: £204, 795
Swansea interim director of education: £190, 134
Cardiff corporate director of resources Christine Saler: £189, 458
Carmarthenshire chief executive Mark James £184, 473
Anglesey (former) chief executive Richard Parry Jones: £186,281
Powys chief executive Jeremy Patterson: £168, 655
Rhondda Cynon Taf chief executive: £168,000
Flintshire chief executive Colin Everett £167, 994
Wrexham (former) head of environment John Bradbury: £166,000
Caerphilly chief executive Anthony O’Sullivan: £165, 876
Neath Port Talbot chief executive Steve Phillips: £164, 360
Newport chief executive Will Godfrey: £161,388
Swansea chief executive: £160, 907
Cardiff director of communities housing and customer services Sarah McGill: £157, 219
Caerphilly deputy chief executive Nigel Barnett: £154, 268
Cardiff director of economic development Neil Hanratty: £151,980
Blaenau Gwent chief legal officer: £164,997
Blaenau Gwent chief people and performance officer: £153,328
Blaenau Gwent chief regeneration officer: £190,165
Blaenau Gwent director of environment £295,751
Bridgend chief executive Darren Mepham: £151,297

 Any reader of Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs will have noticed that when a Senior executive leaves under a cloud they are given a substantial severance package and often turn up in another authority. 
Even if they are incompetent  they leave with a wad of cash generous retirement and are not of work long.

One could be forgiven if there is not some mysterious fraternal organisation at work in our Town Hals to which leading Executives and Councillors are involvedt hat looks after themselves.

The next time you walk past a closed Library,Leisure centre ir meet a already low paid council employee who has had an effective wage cut reflect on

The number of council staff earning over £100,000 in each local authority in Wales

Blaenau Gwent: 8
Bridgend: 12
Caerphilly: 5
Cardiff: 18
Carmarthenshire: 23
Ceredigion: 5
Conwy: 7
Denbighshire: 4
Flintshire: 7
Gwynedd: 6
Anglesey: 5
Merthyr Tydfil: 4
Monmouthshire: 4
Neath Port Talbot: 5
Newport: 4
Pembrokeshire: 9
Powys: 6
Rhondda Cynon Taf: 18
Swansea: 11
Torfaen: 13
Wrexham: 12
Vale of Glamorgan: 9

This news coincides with  the news that
Councillors across Wales are resisting proposals that would see some of them taking a 10% pay cut.
The independent panel which sets pay rates for councillors has proposed that some cabinet members should have their salaries reduced because they do less work than some of their colleagues.
But the move has met a furious reception and could be dropped following a consultation exercise that lasts until the end of November.
One senior councillor, who didn’t want to be named, said: “Most of us have no objection to having a pay freeze – it’s the right thing to do when our budgets are being slashed and workers are losing their jobs. But expecting cabinet members to take a pay cut is going too far.
“Whatever portfolio they have, cabinet members work hard. And why on earth should they be expected to swallow a 10% cut at a time when Assembly Members are about to get a 10% pay rise on top of the much higher salary they get already?”

We may all be in it together but clearly some of us are deeper in the shit than others.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a joke, Blaenau Gwent one of the poorest Local Authority areas in the UK never mind Wales has 8 Council staff on over £100,000 a year, how on earth is that justifiable?

BG has also got 3 staff on higher salaries than the Economic Development Director in Cardiff the capital city’s Council. Again who sets the pay rates?

And can someone tell me what a Director of Environment in Blaenau Gwent Council does to earn almost £300,000 per year?

It’s at times like this I lose patience with welsh voters, this is a genuine scandal when money is tight and it should make people think about who they vote for and also jolt them into voting in the Assembly elections, but it wont this will be long forgotten by the weekend and the next X Factor show.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget the other council employees in schools. Many headteachers in our larger secondary schools are around the £100k mark. Then there are the health authorities and the university senior teams all earning well over the £100k mark.