The Green Group on the City Council are demanding a review of top salaries given to the most senior local Council Officers after it was revealed in a recent Government and Audit report that the massive increases given last year will cost the City Council nearly £200,000 extra to fund the new pay rises and pension contributions of the most senior officers.

Now over 11 officers will be paid more than £74,000 per year with the Chief Executive paid over £141,000.00, a figure between 10% and 35% more than other Chief Executives in neighbouring District authorities.

The extra pay awards which were between 11% and 34% extra in one year mean that the senior officers are in the top 1% pay scales for District Local Authorities in the UK and that the Chief Executive is paid just less than the Prime Minister.

Green Group leader, Cllr David Williams said that at a time of local government austerity, recession and unemployment the rises were unjustified. The Green motion to Council speaks of the pessimistic new restrictions introduced as a result of the budget on the 22nd of June and seeks a review of the most senior officers salaries in view of the massive cuts in local government monies that have been announced.

We now have a pay freeze for all local Government workers and we will be expected to reduce the spending of local Government by 25% over the next 3 years. This will mean that a dramatically reduced service with fewer staff to manage and a reduced range of services to organise, said David. ‘We can’t have very senior staff being paid vast amounts more to do a lot less’.

The option of putting up the rates and letting local people pay the extra will not be there as the new Government are to introduce a cap on rate rises. David says ‘ there has to be a balance in all this and we need to get real …we are suggesting that the very senior salaries are returned to the levels we had in 2008 . .This will reflect more fairly the range of services these very senior staff will manage in the future after the draconian cuts have been implemented.

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